Linguistic representation of violence in judicial opinions in Malaysia
Violent behaviour is understood as being a social and unilateral action initiated by one party. It is social in nature as it occurs within an interpersonal context and unilateral per se because it involves action taken by one individual against the well-being of another. Judges use strategic disc...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2019
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14082/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14082/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14082/1/32352-102495-2-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Violent behaviour is understood as being a social and unilateral action initiated by one party.
It is social in nature as it occurs within an interpersonal context and unilateral per se because
it involves action taken by one individual against the well-being of another. Judges use
strategic discursive strategies to describe the accounts of the crime in their judicial decisions.
This research aims to investigate the language used by judges to describe the accounts of rape
in selected appellate judgments of sexual violence cases in Malaysia. Specifically, it aims to
investigate the discursive strategies adopted by judges to reformulate the description of the
crime. The findings revealed that violent, disapproving, sexual, and ambiguous terms were
adopted. It was also revealed that the crime is often characterized as a non-coerced and
mutually-consented behaviour rather than a criminal act. This results in minimizing the level
of violence, the mitigation of offender’s responsibility, and the relegation of victim’s
experience to the background. Another significant finding from this study is the issue of
judges’ ‘interpretative repertoires’ in describing cases of sexual violence. We recommend for
future studies to include a bigger sample size, as well as to study whether different rape
categories namely acquaintance rape, incestuous rape, and stranger rape would reveal
distinctive terms used for the respective rape types. |
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