With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions

Modern judicial opinions are by tradition, a reflection of hundreds of years of history and tradition. Judges usually give their decision and order verbally in court, and legally significant and important judgments notably from the higher courts, are then published in law reports and become the subs...

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Main Authors: Noraini Ibrahim, Abdul Hadi Awang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM 2011
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/1/7-Noraini_Ibrahim_et_al.pdf
id ukm-3044
recordtype eprints
spelling ukm-30442016-12-14T06:33:24Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/ With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions Noraini Ibrahim, Abdul Hadi Awang, Modern judicial opinions are by tradition, a reflection of hundreds of years of history and tradition. Judges usually give their decision and order verbally in court, and legally significant and important judgments notably from the higher courts, are then published in law reports and become the substance of common law. ‘Dissent’ is the written expression of a judicial opinion that results in the court not arriving at a unanimous decision. Hence, the dissenting judge will have to state his disagreement by focusing on the issue(s) of law before proceeding to provide an explanation. Literature has shown that dissenting opinions are not a feature of all legal jurisdictions nor are they presented in the same way. This paper aims to discuss the discourse of ‘dissenting’ from an analysis of selected Malaysian judicial opinions. In this respect a mixed-method approach was employed to gather the data, while data analysis and the linguistic features were drawn from Trosborg’s (1997) text typology. The main findings reveal that modality, adverbials as well as context-specific structures alluding to adherence and mutual respect, are employed to temper the emotive tone of the judges. Interestingly however, and contrary to literature, non-adherence to such practice has also been located. The question is, is such a position ideological? Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM 2011 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/1/7-Noraini_Ibrahim_et_al.pdf Noraini Ibrahim, and Abdul Hadi Awang, (2011) With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 17 (specia). pp. 45-60. ISSN 0128-5157 http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/3L/3LHome.html
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Local University
institution Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building UKM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
language English
description Modern judicial opinions are by tradition, a reflection of hundreds of years of history and tradition. Judges usually give their decision and order verbally in court, and legally significant and important judgments notably from the higher courts, are then published in law reports and become the substance of common law. ‘Dissent’ is the written expression of a judicial opinion that results in the court not arriving at a unanimous decision. Hence, the dissenting judge will have to state his disagreement by focusing on the issue(s) of law before proceeding to provide an explanation. Literature has shown that dissenting opinions are not a feature of all legal jurisdictions nor are they presented in the same way. This paper aims to discuss the discourse of ‘dissenting’ from an analysis of selected Malaysian judicial opinions. In this respect a mixed-method approach was employed to gather the data, while data analysis and the linguistic features were drawn from Trosborg’s (1997) text typology. The main findings reveal that modality, adverbials as well as context-specific structures alluding to adherence and mutual respect, are employed to temper the emotive tone of the judges. Interestingly however, and contrary to literature, non-adherence to such practice has also been located. The question is, is such a position ideological?
format Article
author Noraini Ibrahim,
Abdul Hadi Awang,
spellingShingle Noraini Ibrahim,
Abdul Hadi Awang,
With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
author_facet Noraini Ibrahim,
Abdul Hadi Awang,
author_sort Noraini Ibrahim,
title With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
title_short With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
title_full With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
title_fullStr With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
title_full_unstemmed With the greatest respect, I cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected Malaysian judicial opinions
title_sort with the greatest respect, i cannot agree…: an investigation into the discourse of dissenting in selected malaysian judicial opinions
publisher Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM
publishDate 2011
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3044/1/7-Noraini_Ibrahim_et_al.pdf
first_indexed 2023-09-18T19:37:41Z
last_indexed 2023-09-18T19:37:41Z
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