0000000000553004
AUTHOR
Sigurd D’hondt
Confronting blackface : Stancetaking in the Dutch Black Pete debate
ecently, 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 conjures u…
One confession, multiple chronotopes : The interdiscursive authentication of an apology in an international criminal trial
This paper presents an interdiscursive analysis of a public apology made before the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a Malian Islamist accused of the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu. It analyzes (a) how the defendant's apology metapragmatically inserts itself into a multiplicity of chronotopes and (b) how the two defense counsels subsequently reformulate that apology as part of a ‘confessional chronotope’, thereby decoupling it from its immediate trial surroundings. The entextualization of this confessional chronotope, and the modifications of the trial's participation framework it proposes, reveal how ICC trial actors navigate the multiple tensions facing this emergent fo…
Evidence About Harm: Dual Status Victim Participant Testimony at the International Criminal Court and the Straitjacketing of Narratives About Suffering
AbstractAlthough victims at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are not parties, they can apply to become “victim participants” and may be authorized by an ICC Chamber to directly and orally express their views and concerns in court. Most ICC Trial Chambers, however, have preferred allowing legal representatives of these victim participants to call victims as witnesses to give testimonial evidence about the harm they suffered. Our article focuses on the practical-epistemological challenges that come with forcing accounts of harm into this testimony-format. We draw upon ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to elucidate the discursive techniques by which legal actors in the Ongwen tr…