One confession, multiple chronotopes: The interdiscursive authentication of an apology in an international criminal trial

Situated Language Use in Africa

Why being there mattered: Staged transparency at the International Criminal Court

Abstract The International Criminal Court (ICC) represents a criminal justice setting exceptionally welcoming to discourse scholars. The court website provides ample information about ongoing cases, hearings are livestreamed, and transcripts, video footage, and other relevant documents are available online. Against this background of comprehensive transparency, this paper explores the additional value of physically attending ICC trial hearings. An auto-ethnography of how the ICC court landscape structures the visitor's path to the courtroom gallery, it is claimed, brings out the staged nature of the Court's projection of transparency. The ensuing discussion explicates the implications of th…

Language, change and society : Perspectives from Finland

Tämä artikkeli on katsaus AFinLAn vuoden 2021 50-vuotisjuhlasymposiumissa Kieli, muutos ja yhteiskunta esiintyneisiin teemoihin. Kuvaamme ensin lyhyesti hybridinä järjestettyä tapahtumaa sekä siihen liittyvää dialogisuutta ja reflektiivisyyttä. Sen jälkeen esittelemme vuosikirjan artikkelit jaettuna neljään temaattiseen ryhmään: 1) muutoksiin mukautuminen kielikoulutuspolitiikassa, 2) kielenoppimisen ja -opetuksen kehittyvät käytännöt, 3) teknologiavälitteiset opetusympäristöt ja 4) työn ja arjen digitalisoituminen. Yhdessä nämä artikkelit kertovat siitä, miten yhteiskunnan muutokset heijastuvat soveltavaan kielentutkimukseen Suomessa. In this paper, we offer an overview of the various them…

Why being there mattered : staged transparency at the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) represents a criminal justice setting exceptionally welcoming to discourse scholars. The court website provides ample information about ongoing cases, hearings are livestreamed, and transcripts, video footage, and other relevant documents are available online. Against this background of comprehensive transparency, this paper explores the additional value of physically attending ICC trial hearings. An auto-ethnography of how the ICC court landscape structures the visitor's path to the courtroom gallery, it is claimed, brings out the staged nature of the Court's projection of transparency. The ensuing discussion explicates the implications of these stagi…

The Indeterminacy of Precedent : Negotiating the Admissibility of Victim Participant Testimony before the International Criminal Court

Abstract The icc represents a legal laboratory that is still consolidating itself, with multiple unclarities in evidence and procedural law requiring resolution through jurisprudence. Our paper draws on interaction analysis to unpack this process, focusing on the jurisprudential construction of ‘dual status’ victim participant testimony. To elucidate how this evidentiary/procedural element is locally negotiated, we examine an excerpt from the Ongwen hearing transcripts, in which the defense objects against the testimony by a dual status witness called by the victim participants’ legal representative. The analysis traces how the defense counsel’s objection is anchored in a trajectory of prio…

Confronting blackface

Abstract Recently, the Netherlands witnessed an agitated discussion over Black Pete, a blackface character associated with the Saint Nicholas festival. This paper analyzes a televised panel interview discussing a possible court ban of public Nicholas festivities, and demonstrates that participants not only disagree over the racist nature of the blackface character but also over the terms of the debate itself. Drawing on recent sociolinguistic work on stancetaking, it traces how panelists ‘laminate’ the interview’s participation framework by embedding their assessments of Black Pete in contrasting dialogical fields. Their stancetaking evokes opposing trajectories of earlier interactions and …

Weaving the threads of international criminal justice: The double dialogicity of law and politics in the ICC al-Mahdi case

International audience; In this paper, we examine the international criminal trial of Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a Malian Islamist who appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, charged with the destruction of Islamic shrines during the 2012 jihadist occupation of Timbuktu. Our objective is to analyze the so-called 'al-Mahdi case' as a dialogical network (the destructions occurred in the context of an asynchronous translocal press-mediated exchange between jihadists and the international community) and as an event unfolding at a dialogical site (when the commander responsible for the destructions was referred to the ICC four years later). These two dialogical orders e…