Strategic lexicalization in courtroom discourse: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis

Abstract

This paper adopts a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to explore the pragmatics of lexical categories in courtroom discourse. More specifically, this paper probes the extent to which courtroom interlocutors employ particular lexemes to achieve specific pragmatic purposes, which, in turn, contributes to understanding the way language operates effectively within legal settings. The data used is taken from the testimony of former American President William Clinton during his impeachment trial for the ‘Monica Lewinsky Affair’. The analytical focus is on 17 lexemes representing four lexical categories, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, by highlighting their frequency distribution in the testimony and revealing their significance as conduits for particular pragmatic meanings. Two main findings are revealed in this paper: first, within particular contexts, lexical categories are not only content knowledge units but also pragmatic meaning carriers whose functions go beyond their most commonly-used semantic sense. These pragmatic functions include information confirmation, verification, elicitation, dissociation, uncertainty, and clarification. Second, applying a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to the study of courtroom discourse contributes to contextualizing the linguistic analysis of the use of language in courtrooms and offers a more functionally based discussion of the pragmatic use of language in legal settings.

Keywords:

• Clinton’s testimony
• corpus linguistics
• courtroom discourse
• critical discourse analysis
• lexicalization
• lexical pragmatics

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

The present study explores the pragmatics of a number of lexemes used in Clinton’s testimony. Its main objective is to show the extent to which lexical categories—nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—are strategically utilized by interlocutors to communicate further pragmatic meanings and new communicative values that go beyond their most commonly-used semantic sense. The paper uses a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to highlight the contribution of lexicalization and lexical pragmatics to the pragmatic interpretation of courtroom discourse. It also sheds light on the analytical incorporation between corpus linguistics techniques and critical discourse analysis in providing a comprehensively unbiased interpretation of courtroom discourse.

1. Introduction

Many empirical studies have been conducted on various linguistic topics as a result of corpus linguistics’ revolutionary changes to the way language is investigated and interpreted in the different contexts of language use today (e.g., Eltahir et al., 2019; Goźdź-Roszkowski, 2021; Krieger, 2003; Stockwell, 2018). These studies highlight the contribution of applying corpus linguistics techniques to discourse studies and their significance in providing a thorough analytical environment wherein analysts can simply manage their analyses by producing acceptable, credible, and plentiful data. Beatty (2010) argues that using corpus linguistics methods to analyze texts not only streamlines the entire text analysis procedure but also emphasizes the way contemporary technology is being integrated with other social and human sciences. Corpus linguistics (CL) assists analysts in obtaining precise and credible outcomes on which to base their study findings in various domains; discourse studies are no exception. In this paper, a frequency distribution analysis (FDA) and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) are employed to provide a linguistic analysis of 17 lexemes representing four lexical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, that are used in the testimony of former American President William Clinton during his impeachment trial for the ‘Monica Lewinsky Affair’. This is conducted by highlighting their frequency distribution in the selected testimony and revealing their pragmatic weight in conveying particular meanings that go beyond their most commonly-used semantic sense.

The application of corpus linguistics methods to discourse studies has increased over the last decades, as they are utilized to provide both theoretical and empirical results contributing to linguistic studies (e.g., Baker, 2006; Bergqvist, 2020; Małolepszy & Głuchowski, 2021; Partington et al., 2013; Reddington et al., 2013). These studies demonstrate the analytical applicability of corpus linguistics to the linguistic analysis of different discourse genres and in various discourse settings, including fiction, legal texts, and everyday conversations. Significantly, to arrive at a comprehensive, unbiased interpretation of any text, text analysts find it necessary to analytically incorporate corpus linguistics methods into critical discourse analysis to explore the hidden meanings encoded in texts in an easy, precise, and plausible way (Widdowson, 2004). In this paper, 17 lexemes are investigated quantitatively via frequency distribution analysis and qualitatively by using CDA. The main focus is to reveal the pragmatic meanings communicated by the selected lexemes, whether they are used individually or in combination with other words, by demonstrating their total and indicative occurrences in the trial under investigation, which, in turn, highlights the way CL is analytically integrated with CDA to arrive at the pragmatic meanings encoded by the selected lexemes in Clinton’s testimony.

According to Richard (2018), lexicalization is one component that characterizes the linguistic representation of legal discourse. Richard links the use of lexis with the legal meanings communicated in legal texts and maintains that specific lexemes are usually utilized to express particular communicative objectives within courtrooms. These communicative purposes are, in most cases, pragmatic in nature; that is, they are strategically employed to achieve particular pragmatic functions (Boris, 2012). In the same vein, Goźdź-Roszkowski (2021) highlights the effectiveness of lexis in legal settings, arguing that lexis in courtroom discourse can be contextually motivated and semantically augmented to convey further meanings. Such a semantic extension, for him, is more representative in spoken legal discourse than in the written form of the same genre. Goźdź-Roszkowski’s (2021) argument, therefore, not only highlights the pragmatic weight of individual lexemes but also emphasizes the pragmatic purposes they convey when used in combination with other words. Such a process of lexicalization is strategic in the sense that language users select specific words in their discourse to convey particular meanings (see Subsection 2.2).

The field of law-related linguistics, known as forensic linguistics, has grown to rely on a variety of research tools to investigate the reciprocal relationship between language and law and the way the former’s pragmatic use significantly influences the discursive scenarios of the latter (e.g., Coulthard, 1994; Coulthard et al., 2017; Guillén-Nieto & Stein, 2021). Crucially, instances of the pragmatic use of language within courtrooms are directly tied to the development of forensic linguistics as a science (Coulthard et al., 2017). The following list of sub-domains provides an indication of the wider scope of forensic linguistics and the fact that many of its topics require analytical methods within the scope of CL to reveal the meanings encoded in these texts. These sub-domains include authorship attribution and plagiarism, the language of the police and law enforcement, interviews with minors and vulnerable witnesses in the legal system, courtroom interaction, and linguistic evidence and expert testimony in courtrooms (O’Keeffe et al., 2007). These could present a variety of difficulties for the analyst, necessitating the use of CL techniques to examine the different types of texts in this field (Guillén-Nieto et al., 2008).

Three research questions are addressed in this study. First, what are the pragmatic functions conveyed by the selected lexemes used in Clinton’s testimony? Second, how does a frequency distribution analysis contribute to communicating these pragmatic functions? Third, to what extent do CL and CDA contribute to revealing the pragmatics of the selected lexemes employed in Clinton’s testimony? The answer to these questions constitutes the main objectives of the current study: (i) to demonstrate the extent to which lexical categories go beyond their semantic sense towards further pragmatic functions in Clinton’s impeachment trial; (ii) to explore the extent to which an FDA is analytically effective in and relevant to the linguistic study of courtroom discourse; and (iii) to shed light on the complementary relationship between CL and CDA in the linguistic investigation of courtroom discourse. These objectives are pursued within two analytical strands: corpus linguistics manifested itself in the frequency distribution analysis and critical discourse analysis, together with a focus on the two notions of lexicalization and lexical pragmatics. The analytical focus is on clarifying the extent to which the use of a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to investigate Clinton’s impeachment trial contributes to contextualizing the linguistic analysis of the pragmatic use of language in courtrooms and offers a more functionally based discussion of the use of language in legal settings.

The remainder of this study is divided into six sections. Section 2 presents the theoretical background and literature by discussing the concepts of CL, strategic lexicalization, lexical pragmatics, frequency distribution analysis, CDA, and courtroom discourse. This section also provides some previous studies relevant to the topic under investigation . Section 3 offers the methodology adopted in this study in terms of the data collection and description, as well as the analytical procedures utilized in the analysis of the selected data. Section 4 displays the analysis of the selected data. Section 5 discusses the findings obtained from the analysis. Section 6 demonstrates the conclusion and offers some recommendations for further research.

2. Theoretical background and literature

2.1. Corpus linguistics

According to McEnery and Hardie (2012), CL is the study of language based on examples of real life language use. Goźdź-Roszkowski (2021) also argues that CL refers to numerous activities and approaches, including the collection of large quantities of texts in a computerized form so that they are open to data-manipulation techniques. For Partington et al. (2013, p. 5), CL is “the set of studies into the form and/or function of language which incorporate the use of computerized corpora in their analysis.” CL uses many techniques in the analysis of language, including the use of concordance, which offers further analytical variables such as key word in context (KWIC) and collocations. These electronic tools focus on the frequency of a searched term (word/phrase) and the contextual environment in which it occurs in text. According to Tognini (2001, pp. 84–87), there are three approaches pertinent to CL. First, the corpus-based approach, which seeks to validate previous results arrived at by techniques other than CL tools. This approach begins with a hypothesis, which is subsequently supported or rejected by corpus evidence. Second, the corpus-driven approach, which constitutes the use of corpus as the sole source of information to investigate a phenomenon with no prior assumptions made. Third, the corpus-assisted approach, which refers to the use of language as a communicative discourse and allows the incorporation of both the use of computerized corpora and discourse studies into language.

For Sinclair (1991), CL has significantly contributed to legal discourse as it helps clarify the reciprocally integrative relationship between language and law. Such a mutual connection has been the core concern of numerous studies (e.g., Małolepszy & Głuchowski, 2021; Solan & Gales, 2017; Solan, 2020; Vogel et al., 2018), whose contributions highlight the role of CL in deciphering the extent to which language is crucial in the construction, explanation, and interpretation of legal discourse. These studies also demonstrate the way CL tools are employed to decode the underpinning meanings of words and phrases in legal texts, which, in turn, helps to reveal further pragmatic meanings of the same linguistic expression.

Corpus linguistics allows the integration of other linguistic approaches into the analysis of language in different contexts, including legal settings. For example, Potts and Kjær (2016) use an eclectic methodology manifested in the use of CL methods and CDA to investigate the way achievements are discursively constructed in the texts created by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Potts and Kjær’s study depends on both quantitative and qualitative methods. The former is represented by the CL tools to quantify and detect patterns of meaning in data, and the latter constitutes the use of CDA analytical strategies to explain and interpret the results arrived at by the quantitative analysis. Partington et al. (2013) also offer a practical guide for researchers in CL by providing a widespread introduction to corpus techniques for practitioners of discourse studies. They explore a variety of language topics and areas, including lexical priming, idioms and co-selection, evaluative lexis, metaphor, (im)politeness, stylistics, language change, sociopolitical issues, and evaluation in discourse communication. They further demonstrate the way through which discourse studies can better benefit from the various applications and techniques of CL to arrive at a comprehensive interpretation of discourse in its different settings. Furthermore, Baker (2006) discusses the effective use of corpora and computational linguistics to reveal the various linguistic patterns that enable analysts to make sense of the way language is employed in the construction of discourse.

Crucially, the incorporation of CL techniques and discourse studies approaches, particularly CDA, serves to fulfill the analytical gap resulting from the lack of a critical view on language use, which is usually missed in CL analytical tools whose core concern is largely for descriptive purposes. For Baker (2006), such integration aims at reducing the researchers’ and analysts’ cognitive bias, which emerges from a desire to select a type of data that functions to achieve the ideological purposes of researchers. They may focus on aspects of a text that support their hypotheses, while disregarding those that may present a different and/or contradictory point of view. In addition to its effective role in restricting bias in linguistic analysis, CL is “a useful way to approach discourse analysis because of the incremental effect of discourse” (Baker, 2006, p. 13). That is, the employment of CL approaches in the linguistic analysis of texts contributes to understanding the way language is constructed comprehensively and revealing the underlying discourses.

2.2. Strategic lexicalization and lexical pragmatics

Strategic lexicalization, the selection of particular words through which specific intended meanings are represented in discourse, is one of the most common devices employed in the linguistic analysis of written and spoken discourse. According to Fairclough (2013), words and phrases always carry connotations that are derived from their frequent use. He argues that ideological meanings can be communicated through the dexterous use of words. Fairclough’s view is also reported by Abdi and Basarati (2016, p. 37), who state that “every word carries an implicit connotation and a hidden power.” Such a hidden power is usually pragmatic in nature in the sense that the selected words are utilized as conduits for pragmatic purposes. The significance of lexicalization in the linguistic analysis of discourse has been the focus of Fairclough’s (2013) lexical approach to CDA, in which he identifies three values through which the use of words is relevant to the critical analysis of language use. They are experiential, relational, and expressive. Fairclough’s values emphasize the importance of lexical categories in analyzing discourse and conveying the ideological state of the speaker. Fowler (1996) also postulates that words are skillfully selected to carry the ideological concerns of the speaker, which is subsequently accentuated by Schaffner’s (2004) argument that lexicalization is one of the strategies used to achieve the particular goals of language users. Words, therefore, communicate not only their ordinary referential sense or formal semantic value but also further pragmatic meanings, which shows the significance of lexical pragmatics in discourse studies.

Lexical pragmatics, according to Blunter (1998), investigates the processes by which linguistically-specified (literal) word meanings are modified in use. For Blunter, it refers to the particular account of the division of labor between lexical semantics and pragmatics. Such word meaning modification is contextually motivated to communicate certain pragmatic functions fulfilling the speaker’s goals. The process of pragmaticalizing words in discourse is also based on “context-dependent inferences” (Brochhagen et al., 2018), which allow for more pragmatic enrichment of the employed lexemes or of any lexically context-sensitive expression that ultimately serves purely pragmatic reasons. For Recanati (2010), pragmatic enrichment is usually a product of semantic compositionality. That is, words take on further meanings beyond their semantic value or referential sense, which is also motivated by the context. In other words, lexical categories are pragmatically enriched by the contextual features of the conversation in which they occur.

The concept of lexical pragmatics has been approached by many scholars, both in legal discourse and in other discourse genres. Within legal settings, Zejnilović et al. (2023) investigate the extent to which meta-argumentative verbs employed in legal texts can be pragmatically enriched to carry further pragmatic purposes that go beyond their literal meanings. They use a corpus-based analysis to identify the pragmatic effects, such as politeness, that could be associated with the meta-argumentative verbs frequently used in legal texts. Their study also highlights the significance of context in assigning the various pragmatic meanings pertaining to the employed verbs. Addressing lexical pragmatics, Bibok (2004) argues that lexical categories do encode literal meanings that provide a starting point for inferential activities during discourse interpretation and ultimately result in a comprehensive understanding of the discourse event. For him, words, within specific contexts, allow for more pragmatically-constructed concepts that can be inserted into utterances’ interpretation. In this regard, Bibok (2004, p. 265) maintains that “as words have underspecified meaning representations, they reach their full meanings in corresponding contexts through considerable pragmatic inference,” and concludes that such a process of pragmatic inference is discursively managed by the cognitive principle of relevance, which further regulates the way in which the utterance meaning is construed.

2.3. Frequency distribution analysis

Frequency distribution analysis (FDA) is a quantitative data set that shows the number of times categorical variables occur in a text (Bergqvist, 2020). Bergqvist (2020) maintains that an FDA is computationally enabled through concordance by loading a corpus from various files, offering some changes to the files of any corpora, and providing various types of analysis, ranging from basic text searches to the search for specific expressions in context, words, and/or phrases. Wiechmann and Fuhs (2006) emphasize the same function of concordance, arguing that it serves to access a huge amount of data for specific analytical purposes in many types of texts. An FDA, therefore, is a CL tool to organize raw data of a quantitative variable by demonstrating the manner in which different values of a variable are distributed and their corresponding frequencies in a given text, and showing the significance of a word when it collocates with other neighboring ones (Coulthard, 1994). The contextual environment wherein a word occurs helps explain and interpret the way language is employed for pragmatic meanings. This can be enabled by the employment of CDA strategies to expose the underpinning meanings communicated by the usage of specific words and phrases within particular contexts in discourse. Here lies the integrative relationship between CL and CDA.

2.4. Critical discourse analysis

Numerous linguists and discourse analysts, including Fairclough (1995, 2013); Fairclough and Wodak (1997); van Dijk (1996, 2014); and Weiss and Wodak (2003), have addressed CDA from different perspectives, arguing that it is a type of textual analysis that focuses on the linguistic, discursive, and ideological characteristics of discourse. According to Widdowson (2007), CDA is a socio-political paradigm for examining texts and talk in order to uncover underlying ideologies. CDA, van Dijk (1993) argues, is an analytical approach to language study that aims to emphasize the ways in which power relations are manifested in discourse and within various political and social contexts. The primary goal of CDA is to clarify the relationships between the different components that formulate the total representation of discourse. These are language, power, and ideology (van Dijk, 2014). Ideology, which is sometimes referred to as the manner in which meaning is formed and conveyed by symbolic representations of diverse kinds, is a necessary component to establish or perpetuate unequal power relations within the theoretical and analytical frameworks of CDA (Wodak & Meyer, 2001). For Cheng and Machin (2022), the language used in legal settings provides a crucial route through which discourses are formulated and shared within specific contexts. These discourses, for them, are models of interpretation of the language used in courtrooms and are connected to the different social practices and contexts pertinent to legal discourse.

Because it focuses on discourse as a social activity, CDA is particularly concerned with social and political issues (Fairclough, 1995). According to Fairclough and Wodak (1997), discourse structures are performed, verified, legitimized, and reproduced within CDA’s analytical framework to discover the different power relations that are produced, reproduced, practiced, and represented by diverse linguistic strategies in any communication act; the discourse delivered in courtrooms is no exception. For van Dijk (1996), there are several forms of CDA, each of which has its own analytical properties. He, therefore, distinguishes between the CDA of a legal text and that of a fictional or media text. For example, each style of analysis employs distinct linguistic and discursive representations. Each kind has its own set of principles and is approached from several angles. All of them, however, are studied in light of CDA’s framework to show how certain discourse structures are used to establish and perpetuate power, dominance, and hegemony relations.

CDA has been applied to investigate all types of interactions, particularly those pertinent to powerful-powerless interactions, the use of language to achieve persuasion and/or manipulation, and the ways through which power and dominance are exercised in discourse. The employment of CDA together with CL in the analysis of courtroom discourse serves to overcome the criticism leveled against the latter in the sense that it gives significance to linguistic features in isolation and marginalizes the role of context analysis, as it is mainly concerned with frequencies and regular patterns of collocations, which are not enough to arrive at a comprehensive interpretation of discourse (Widdowson, 2004). This has previously been emphasized by Stubbs (1997), who argues that linguistic features should be studied not only by individual features but also by a combination of neighboring co-occurring features. The complementary nature of CDA and CL can also be seen in numerous studies in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), whose contributions demonstrate the effectiveness of CL tools in achieving high data representativeness (e.g., Baker & Levon, 2015; Marchi & Taylor, 2009; Partington, 2004; Potts & Kjær, 2016; Upton & Cohen, 2009). These studies highlight the way CDA tools and CL techniques are incorporated to reveal hidden meanings in a given text. Furthermore, the use of CL tools in the linguistic analysis of texts helps overcome the lack of a systematic analysis in CDA (Widdowson, 2004). Such a lack of systematic analysis in CDA may result in an interpretative bias due to the idea that the discursive interpretations of critical linguists may be politically rather than linguistically motivated (Stubbs, 1997).

2.5. Courtroom discourse

Courtroom discourse refers to the discourse of legal language used in courtroom settings (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007) and is entirely concerned with the investigation of legal language as object, process, and instrument (Stygall, 2012). According to Doty (2010), courtroom discourse provides linguists and discourse analysts with a wide arena for carrying out pragmatic and contextually-oriented research, as it constitutes various types of written and spoken language, including the verbal and/or nonverbal interaction among courtroom participants (judges, lawyers, witnesses, defendants, etc.), testimonies, depositions, instruction from judges to juries, lawyers’ talk, etc. Doty maintains that whether the focus is on the spoken or written form of language, the fundamental idea of the courtroom presupposes interaction among participants. In courtrooms, such linguistic and paralinguistic interaction carries certain pragmatic purposes (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007). These purposes often serve to assist the intended meaning of the speaker during the courtroom discussion and can be decoded by a comprehensive linguistic investigation, which, in turn, mirrors the interpretative image of the whole discourse event. Such a linguistic investigation also aims to shed light on the reciprocal relationship between language and law, as the former is an effective instrument for deciphering hidden meanings communicated by the different linguistic strategies employed in courtrooms. Numerous studies highlight the relationship between language and law, including Eades (2000), Farinde (2009), and Supardi (2016), who discuss the substantial link between language and law by arguing that legal documents are constantly in need of linguistic analysis to reveal the hidden meanings that lie beyond the surface linguistic expressions. These studies also highlight the role of language in determining the court’s final verdict, maintaining that language operates successfully in written and spoken legal texts.

2.6. Related studies

Numerous studies examined the relationship between the employment of specific linguistic expressions and legal discourse by focusing on the way a particular language use operates successfully within the contexts of courtroom discourse (e.g., Supardi, 2016; Tiersma, 1999; Williams & Tessuto, 2013). These studies further highlighted the complementary connection between language and law, which is amply demonstrated by the fact that legal texts can be examined not only from a legal point of view but also from a purely linguistic perspective. This, in turn, contributes to understanding the various legal texts, such as contracts, legislation, testimonies, and regulations. The mutual connection between language and law was manifested in many themes, including the investigation of the linguistic features pertaining to lexis utilized in legal discourse by law practitioners (Bhatia, 1993); demonstrating the various ways through which linguistic power is practiced in courtrooms and the way such power relations influence the interpretation of legal texts (Supardi, 2016); and exploring the effective role of language in providing a fundamental method through which discourses are originated and shared within specific legal contexts (Cheng & Machin, 2022). These studies contributed to a greater understanding of language-based interactions in courtrooms, deciphering the pragmatic purposes encoded in courtroom debates, and negotiating justice-related themes within the various legal communities.

Further, the use and application of CL methods to discourse studies have been the focus of many studies (e.g., Bray, 2022; Li, 2017; Gillings et al., 2023; Wang, 2018), among others. Yu et al. (2021), for example, used a corpus-based critical discourse analysis to investigate the news reports on the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the United Kingdom. They utilized Fairclough’s CDA model to demonstrate the extent to which there are certain ideological discrepancies in the ideological representations of the pandemic in the news reports pertaining to the two countries. This study casted emphasis on the lexical level of analysis by showing that words play a significant role as ideological signals in the two types of news reports and also emphasized the analytical integration between CL and CDA, particularly in addressing ideological themes in discourse. Reddington et al. (2013) also employed data mining to study the semantics of narrative writing. They examined the extent to which the input data might affect how fictional discourse is ultimately perceived, and discovered that data mining conducted through visualization can replicate the semantic classification carried by fictional texts. Li and Zhang (2022) drew on both CL and CDA to investigate the representation of Islam and Muslims in American media by clarifying the way discursive power is penetrated by the ideological representation of media, which mirrors a discourse of otherness contributing to people’s prejudice, such as Islamophobia from the Us group and fear of the Them group.

As for lexical pragmatics, there are two studies relevant to the topic approached in this paper. The first study was conducted by Hall (2017), who used a contextualist approach to utterance interpretation by focusing on the question of whether a word’s meaning is a concept governed by the principle of semantic compositionality, or something nonconceptual such as a concept schema that can be contextually motivated to communicate certain pragmatic meanings in discourse. Hall’s study demonstrated that words are carriers of meanings that go beyond their ordinary semantic use and revealed that word meanings are pragmatically adjusted in context to convey further pragmatic meanings. The second study was presented by Kolaiti and Wilson (2014), who provided a corpus-based investigation of lexical-pragmatic processes, including lexical narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension. This study advocated the assumption that lexically encoded meanings are modified in use, and also highlighted the difference between semantics and pragmatics at the level of the word or phrase rather than the utterance. Kolaiti and Wilson (2014) also highlighted the effective role of the situational context and of the addressee’s schemata in order to successfully arrive at the speaker’s intended meaning.

Obviously, the above-mentioned studies indicate the effectiveness of applying CL methods and CDA to the linguistic investigation of the different discourse genres addressing various linguistic phenomena. This, in turn, makes the corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach adopted in this study analytically relevant to decoding the effectiveness of the lexemes at hand as conduits of various pragmatic functions in Clinton’s testimony.

3. Methodology

3.1. Data collection and description

The data used in the study was taken from the 1998 impeachment trial of former American President William Clinton. The data used was divided into three main sections: the first section offers the testimony from the deposition in the Paula Jones case; the second section provides the testimony and court questions related to the Monica Lewinsky case; and the third section constitutes Clinton’s answers to the 81 questions asked by the House Judiciary Committee in the Monica Lewinsky affair. The trial under investigation can be downloaded from the famous trials website, available at https://www.famous-trials.com/clinton/883-clintontestimony. The analytical focus is on the conversational turns of four discourse participants: (i) President Clinton; (ii) Judge Wright; (iii) Mr. Robert Bennett, Clinton’s lawyer; and (iv) Mr. Fisher, the court’s representative. Despite the fact that all of these discourse participants are active in the trial’s discourse, only two of them deliver the majority of its conversational turns: Clinton and Mr. Fisher. Almost all the conversational turns of the former are delivered in a declarative mode, represented by his answers to the questions asked by the court’s representative, whereas the majority of the latter’s conversational turns are in an interrogative mode, manifested in the questions directed to Clinton. Table 1 shows the number of conversational turns pertaining to the four discourse participants.

Table 1. Discourse participants and their conversational turns

Discourse participant	No. of conversational turns
Clinton	331
Mr. Fisher	325
Judge Wright	58
Mr. Bennett	71
Total	785

3.2. Research procedures

The research procedures adopted in the analysis of the selected data encompass three stages. The first stage is a preliminary stage, in which the whole text of the trial is extensively read to identify the most indicative lexemes employed by discourse participants. In this stage, the importance of the contextual environment in which each selected lexeme occurs is also highlighted to show how the employment of a specific word affects and is affected by the contextual and co-textual components of the linguistic expression. The second stage is the computational identification, which is concerned with finding out the total frequency of the selected lexemes pertaining to each lexical category, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. These frequencies are anticipated to contribute to the understanding of the pragmatic functions communicated by the selected lexemes employed in the trial under investigation. In other words, they help in deciphering the various hidden meanings targeted in discourse. This is conducted in the third analytical stage, which is an interpretative and explanatory stage that is based on the use of CDA strategies to reveal the pragmatic purposes conveyed by each of the selected lexemes.

For selecting the lexemes under investigation, a preliminary quantitative analysis is conducted to identify the most indicative lexemes employed in the trial. This procedure has resulted in the conclusion that 17 lexemes representing four lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) are strategically used by discourse participants to communicate specific pragmatic functions. These lexemes are selected, and their frequency is calculated for the purpose of the analysis. The selection criteria are twofold: first, the extent to which the selected words communicate further pragmatic meanings that go beyond their referential sense or semantic value; and, second, their effectiveness in shaping the interpretative nature of the whole discourse event, which is revealed by investigating the contexts wherein they occur. Crucially, the total number of occurrences a word has is not important in the selection criteria. This is because a word, as it will be analytically evidenced, may have a very low frequency, but it is highly indicative and effective in communicating a further pragmatic meaning. The final dataset, therefore, includes 17 indicative lexemes that are used as a representative sample for a full-fledged analysis: 5 nouns, 5 verbs, 3 adjectives, and 4 adverbs. Table 2 shows these lexemes and their total frequency in the trial under investigation.

Table 2. List of indicative lexemes constituting the final dataset

Lexical category	Lexeme	Frequency
nouns	memory	21
	harassment	3
	affairs	10
	gifts	4
	accusations	1
verbs	know	179
	think	112
	believe	88
	deny	84
	admit	82
adjectives	sexual	26
	sure	28
	aware	10
adverbs	always	13
	never	20
	certainly	9
	emphatically	1
Total	17 lexemes	691

Importantly, applying any analytical approach to the analysis of legal discourse cannot confine itself to only quantitative methods. To interpret the functional basis supporting the usage of the selected lexemes, whether they are employed individually or in light of their co-occurring linguistic contexts, also necessitates the use of qualitative analysis. Both linguistic and functional content can be seen in the dimensions of variation. The shared function is what causes linguistic qualities to co-occur or co-select. This calls for the interpretation of co-occurrence patterns in terms of shared situational, social, and cognitive functions of the linguistic expression (Koźbiał, 2020).

4. Analysis and results

This part presents the analysis of the selected data and the results by demonstrating the total and indicative frequencies of the 17 selected lexemes representing the four lexical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in Clinton’s impeachment trial. This part also shows the various pragmatic functions communicated by the selected lexemes.

4.1. The use of nouns in Clinton’s testimony

In the selected data, some nouns are strategically employed to communicate particular pragmatic functions. These nouns are: memory, harassment, affairs, accusations, and gifts. They, within particular contexts and in combination with other words, carry specific pragmatic functions, as is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Pragmatic functions and frequency of the indicative nouns used in Clinton’s trial

Nouns	Discourse participants	Frequency	Total occurrence	Indicative occurrence	Examples of the word in context	Pragmatic function
memory	Clinton	21	21	7	- Mr. Ferguson might have a better memory than I do. - to the best of my memory. I would not. - I just have a vague memory that she came once before Christmas.	- information dissociation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	0
harassment	Clinton	1	3	3	- we were the first or one of the very first states to actually have a clearly defined sexual harassment policy. - I think it is relevant what the governor knew about the state’s sexual harassment policy.	- information clarification
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	2
affairs	Clinton	3	10	3	- did you take any action to try to suppress any rumors about women who allegedly had had extramarital affairs with you? - did you give Betsey Wright the responsibility to deal with rumors about alleged extramarital affairs involving you?	- information verification
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	7
accusations	Clinton	0	1	1	- do you recall ever having seen her before early 1994 when she first made public her accusations against you?	- information verification
	Judge	0
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	0
gifts	Clinton	2	4	4	- I gave her some gifts for her children and herself. - have you ever given any gifts to Monica Lewinsky? - I give people a lot of gifts. - Has Monica Lewinsky ever given you any gifts?	- information confirmation - information verification
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	2

Table 3 displays the frequency distribution of five nouns strategically employed in the discourse of Clinton’s testimony: memory, affairs, harassment accusations, and gifts, with total occurrences of 21, 10, 3, 1, and 4, respectively. Despite the fact that the last four words have a very low frequency, they are highly indicative in conveying particular pragmatic meanings in the trial. To clarify this, the five words carry particular intended meanings, including information dissociation, clarification, verification, and confirmation. The different pragmatic functions communicated by the five lexemes serve to support and/or defy the court’s decision. Despite the fact that nouns are the central units of language whose main discourse function is to establish links across and within clauses, the five nouns displayed in Table 3 convey specific pragmatic functions that contribute to the general interpretation of Clinton’s trial.

As indicated from Table 3, the lexemes memory, harassment, affairs, accusations, and gifts, when employed in combination with other words and/or phrases, communicate rich pragmatic purposes. Thus, the phrases a better memory than I do, to the best of my memory, vague memory, sexual harassment, extramarital affairs, her accusations, and some gifts for her children, have various pragmatic purposes in the discourse of the trial. These purposes are to verify, clarify, confirm, and/or dissociate oneself from a piece of information. For example, the collocation between sexual and harassment invokes a wider interpretative scope for the word, which causes it to be pragmatically augmented to carry further meanings than what is communicated by its commonly understood referential meaning. Such a word, according to Langelan (1993), indicates unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or other conduct based on sex affecting the dignity of women and men at work. For Langelan, this conduct includes unwelcome physical, verbal, or nonverbal conduct, and it also carries the meaning of abusing, insulting, and harming in an unwanted way. Interpretatively, the collocation of the adjective sexual and the noun harassment, therefore, serves to guide the interpretative wheel towards a confirmation of guilt on the part of Clinton. The use of harassment is thus a “contextualization cue” (Gumperz, 1992, p. 231), which signals and situates the institutional meanings of the whole trial. Similarly, modifying the lexemes memory and affairs with vague and extramarital, respectively, functions to communicate information dissociation for the former and information verification for the latter.

Furthermore, the use of the indefinite pronoun some in some gifts, which refers to non-specificity, functions to convey the pragmatic meaning that Clinton does not exactly know or identify the type and quantity of the gifts he gave to Monica. Likewise, the use of the prepositional phrase for her children after the lexeme gifts in I gave her some gifts for her children and herself, the use of the indefinite quantifier a lot of before it in I give people a lot of gifts, and the use of the third person singular pronoun her, which refers to Monica Lewinsky, in connection with the word accusations, also serve to construct an image of Clinton as an innocent. The indefiniteness and non-specificity communicated by a lot of and people further indicate vagueness on the part of Clinton’s responses to the question of whether or not he gave any gifts to Monica. These lexemes, along with their collocated components, serve to highlight one key aspect of the use of words in courtroom discourse: strategic lexicalization. That is, they are strategically employed to communicate further meanings than what they convey by their ordinary semantic sense. Significantly, selecting the linguistic context in which the five nouns occur is a process of “pragmatic adjustment,” in which “the meaning provided by a lexical item has to be adjusted in context in order to recover the concept the speaker intended” (Carston, 2015, p. 196). Thus, it is not only the use of a specific word that is effective in communicating the intentionality of the speaker, but also the choice of the neighboring words is pragmatically strategic.

4.2. The use of verbs in Clinton’s testimony

Verbs constitute the second lexical category used to communicate particular pragmatic meanings in Clinton’s testimony. The five verbs presented in this part are know, think, believe, admit, and deny. These verbs are pragmatically loaded with meanings that go beyond their ordinary semantic sense. Table 4 presents the frequency and pragmatic functions of the indicative verbs employed by discourse participants in the trial.

Table 4. Pragmatic functions and frequency of the indicative verbs used in Clinton’s trial

Verbs	Discourse participants	Frequency	Total occurrence	Indicative occurrence	Examples of the word in context	Pragmatic function
know	Clinton	127	179	63	- I don’t know how many days a week she worked. - I really don’t know. - I honestly don’t know what his direct title is. - now, do you know a woman named Monica Lewinsky?	- information denial - information elicitation - information confirmation
	Judge	5
	Bennet	16
	Fisher	31
think	Clinton	88	112	75	- I think she was a volunteer. - I don’t think I was notified when she got the job at the counsel’s office. - I think she came to one of the, one of the Christmas parties.	- information uncertainty
	Judge	2
	Bennet	7
	Fisher	15
believe	Clinton	78	88	51	- I believe she worked in the social office. - did you ever come to believe that the federal guidelines were any different after you became president than they were at the time you signed this policy? - I do not believe she was there alone. - I believe that she has given me a tie.	- information confirmation - information elicitation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	2
	Fisher	8
admit	Clinton	0	82	82	- do you admit or deny that you asked Erskine Bowles if he would ask John Hilley to give Ms. Lewinsky a positive job recommendation?	- information elicitation
	Judge	81
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	0
deny	Clinton	2	84	84	- I emphatically deny it. It did not happen. - I can’t deny that I did. - and you deny that testimony?	- information confirmation - information elicitation
	Judge	82
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	0

As shown in Table 4, the five verbs are highly frequent in the discourse of Clinton’s impeachment trial. These verbs are know, think, believe, admit, and deny, with total frequencies of 179, 112, 88, 82, and 84, respectively. As displayed in Table 4, these verbs play a crucial role in conveying specific pragmatic meanings, including information confirmation, uncertainty, elicitation, and denial.

It can be noticed from Table 4 that the five verbs used in Clinton’s trial, which semantically communicate the cognitive attitudes of the speaker, have additional pragmatic purposes centered on the degree of certainty and commitment towards the proposition presented. The strategic use of the verb know, whether in the affirmative or negative form, serves to confirm, elicit, and/or deny a piece of information. Indicatively, the majority of these uses come in response to yes-no questions. This interrogation type is supposed to be answered by the sentence-modifying adverbs yes or no; however, know is used to communicate a meaning of denial, confirmation, and/or elicitation. Each of these pragmatic meanings is discursively tied to a specific grammatical mode. That is, when the verb is used in the declarative mode, it conveys information confirmation and/or information denial, as in I don’t know how many days a week she worked and I really don’t know. On the other hand, when know is used in the interrogative mode, it functions to elicit a piece of information, as in do you know a woman named Monica Lewinsky? As noticed from Table 4, know occurs in three conversational structures in Clinton’s testimony. Two of them are in the declarative mode, and the third is in the interrogative mode. Declaratively, know occurs in two structures: (I + know) and (I +negative auxiliary (don’t/didn’t) + know). Interrogatively, know assigns the structure of (interrogative operator (do/did) + you + know). The first two usages serve to confirm or deny the relevance of immediately preceding or following propositions, whereas the third usage functions to elicit more information concerning preceding or following propositions. In its second declarative usage, i.e., I don’t/didn’t know, know is strategically utilized by Clinton to signal that the immediately following expression communicates his thoughts and/or that he is unsure of his choice of wording in the utterance, which correlates with Scheibman’s (2000) argument that the construction I don’t know is usually used in discourse to convey the lack of knowledge concerning the proposition presented. Further, the use of the two adverbs really and honestly before the verb know is a further attempt by the speaker to communicate a feeling of truthfulness to the court. Obviously, the preverbal position of really and honestly functions to show Clinton’s conviction towards the information he delivers.

In the same vein, the verbs think and believe are strategically employed to communicate further pragmatic meanings, including information uncertainty, clarification, and elicitation. The two verbs, when preceded by the first-person singular pronoun, can be said to be self-referential and cognitive verbs that indicate the cognitive attitude of the speaker (Kaltenböck, 2009). That is, the patterned co-occurrence of the first-person singular pronoun with the two verbs contributes to boosting the pragmatic force of the strong validity of the speaker in the case of believe, and the weak validity of the speaker in the case of think. Furthermore, within particular contexts and patterned co-occurrences, the two verbs assign the status of pragmatic markers, communicating interactional and pragmatic functions. The verb think intensifies the pragmatic force of the utterance wherein it occurs by expressing possibility and probability on the one hand, and inferring uncertainty, on the other (Fetzer, 2008). Such a pragmatic intensification lies in communicating the attitudinal behavior of dissociation, or, in other words, the speaker’s weak commitment towards the proposition presented. Unlike think, believe encodes the speaker’s own beliefs and is used to introduce and/or reinforce an argument with a stronger pragmatic force (van Bogaert, 2006). Again, these pragmatic functions are communicated by interlocutors in two modes: declaratively and interrogatively. As demonstrated in Table 4, information elicitation is maintained in the interrogative mode, whereas the other pragmatic functions are communicated declaratively. In both cases, think and believe are strategically employed to express a higher or lower degree of certainty about and commitment to a given proposition. Further, in light of Grice’s (1975) conversational implicature, think and believe are perceived as pragmatic markers of the maxim of quality, as the two verbs can indicate the degree of authenticity in the presented proposition. The assumption that think and believe are indicators that mirror the degree of truthfulness on the part of the speaker has also been accentuated by Aijmer’s (2009) argument that think signifies a lower degree of belief and a lower degree of adequate evidence, whereas believe indicates a higher degree of belief and a higher degree of adequate evidence. As such, given the fact that think and believe are most commonly used by Clinton with a frequency of 88 and 78, respectively, it can be concluded that Clinton’s employment of think is to communicate his weak commitment towards the validity of his proposition, dissociating himself from an action, whereas he utilizes believe to express a firm commitment to the validity of his contribution, confirming a piece of information, positively or negatively.

As for the verbs admit and deny, the former is employed to elicit information, whereas the latter conveys two pragmatic meanings: first, information elicitation, when it is utilized in an interrogative sentence, as in and you deny that testimony? Second, information confirmation, which is achieved when the verb is used in a declarative sentence, particularly in response to a question, as in I emphatically deny it. The adverb emphatically that precedes the verb deny is strategically employed to accentuate the second pragmatic function. Significantly, the majority of the occurrences of admit and deny are in the interrogative sequence of (do you admit or deny + proposition), which serves to confirm a subsequent proposition and/or to elicit more information concerning the same proposition. Despite the fact that the two verbs are frequently used interrogatively in yes-no questioning sequences, they are not answered by the sentence-modifying adverbs yes or no. However, Clinton answered the majority of these questions with some declarative sentences that are not headed by yes or no, which pragmatically indicates that he does not want to commit himself to a proposition, whether by confirming or denying, and, thus, allows himself to withdraw a specific response in due course.

4.3. The use of adjectives in Clinton’s testimony

Three adjectives are strategically used in Clinton’s testimony: sexual, sure, and aware. These words communicate particular pragmatic purposes. Table 5 demonstrates the frequency of the three adjectives and the pragmatic functions they convey in the trial.

Table 5. Pragmatic functions and frequency of the indicative adjectives used in Clinton’s trial

Adjectives	Discourse participants	Frequency	Total occurrence	Indicative occurrence	Examples of the word in context	Pragmatic function
sexual	Clinton	4	26	16	- Did you have an extramarital sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky? - I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.	- information clarification
	Judge	2
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	19
sure	Clinton	23	28	13	- I’m pretty sure it was in the lobby. - I’m sure I had casual conversation with her. - I’m not sure that I did.	- information confirmation - information dissociation
	Judge	2
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	2
aware	Clinton	3	10	10	- you’re aware that she testified that you took her hand and put it on your penis? - are you aware that she has testified that you kissed her in the hallway between the Oval Office and the private kitchen? - I am aware of that.	- information verification - information confirmation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	2
	Fisher	5

Table 5 demonstrates that the three adjectives sexual, sure, and aware have frequencies of 26, 28, and 10, respectively. In all their occurrences in the discourse of Clinton’s impeachment trial, these adjectives are conduits for specific pragmatic meanings, including information confirmation, verification, dissociation, and clarification.

The adjective sexual is strategically employed as a modifier that describes the relationship between Clinton and Monica. The collocation between sexual and affairs, extramarital, and relations in extramarital sexual affair and sexual relations is highly indicative in contextualizing the whole trial into one macro-proposition: Clinton-Monica’s case is entirely sexual. This contextualization process is maintained by the number of occurrences this word has in the trial: 26 occurrences. 19 occurrences out of the total frequency of the word are produced by Mr. Fisher, the court’s representative. This mirrors Fisher’s attempt to contextualize the whole discourse within sexuality, particularly if we know that the same adjective is also collocated with the word harassment three times, two of which are used by Fisher (see Subsection 4.1).

Likewise, the lexeme sure is used by discourse participants 28 times, among which are 23 occurrences delivered by Clinton. Almost all these occurrences come in response to Fisher’s questions, where Clinton attempts to communicate two pragmatic functions: to confirm a piece of information, as in I’m pretty sure it was in the lobby and I’m sure I had casual conversation with her; and to dissociate himself from a piece of information, as in I’m not sure that I did. In both cases, sure serves as a booster that strengthens the pragmatic force of the utterance wherein it occurs. This correlates with Hyland’s (1998) argument that the sequence I am sure creates an impression of certainty, conviction, and assurance and can be used to instill trust and confidence in the proposition presented. By association, the negative form of the same sequence, i.e., I am not sure, also functions to convey uncertainty about and dissociation from the proposition presented.

The same holds true for the adjective aware, which is strategically utilized to convey two pragmatic functions that go beyond its semantic value: information verification and information confirmation. The former is communicated when the word is used in an interrogative structure, as in and you’re aware that she testified that you took her hand and put it on your penis?, whereas the latter is maintained when the word is employed in a declarative mode, as in Clinton’s response to Fisher’s above question by I am aware of that. While the two lexemes sure and aware are strategically employed by Clinton to communicate certainty, the latter better captures Fisher’s questions to Clinton to verify a given piece of information.

4.4. The use of adverbs in Clinton’s testimony

Four adverbs are also utilized in Clinton’s impeachment trial to communicate pragmatic meanings that go beyond their commonly understood semantic function. These adverbs are always, never, certainly, and emphatically. Table 6 adds more clarification.

Table 6. Pragmatic functions and frequency of the indicative adverbs used in Clinton’s trial

Adverbs	Discourse participants	Frequency	Total occurrence	Indicative occurrence	Examples of the word in context	Pragmatic function
always	Clinton	13	13	7	- but otherwise she’s always there when I’m there. - are there doors at both ends of the hallway? - they are, and they’re always open.	- information confirmation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	0
never	Clinton	15	20	14	- I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I’ve never had an affair with her. - I never saw her in Texas, I never knew what she was doing there.	- information denial
	Judge	0
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	4
certainly	Clinton	5	9	5	- It’s certainly not the truth. It would not be the truth. - have you ever met with Monica Lewinsky in the White House between the hours of midnight and six a.m.? - I certainly don’t think so.	- information confirmation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	1
	Fisher	3
emphatically	Clinton	1	1	1	- all right, and you deny that testimony? - I emphatically deny it. It did not happen.	- information confirmation
	Judge	0
	Bennet	0
	Fisher	0

Table 6 clarifies that the adverbs always, never, certainly, and emphatically have frequencies of 13, 20, 9, and 1, respectively. The four adverbs are used to communicate the extent to which given information in Clinton’s testimony is confirmed and/or denied by discourse participants.

It can be noticed from the examples in Table 6 that the four adverbs are pragmatically loaded. That is, they are carriers of pragmatic meanings that go beyond their semantic sense. The four words are speaker-oriented in the sense that they represent the speaker’s subjective commitment to the truth of the proposition presented by the adverb. The two adverbs of frequency, always and never, are used by Clinton to confirm or deny a piece of information, respectively. In his utterance she’s always there when I’m there, which comes in response to Fisher’s question concerning the work schedule of Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, Clinton’s use of the adverb always is highly strategic because he not only wants to express continuity and permanence in his presence in accompany of his secretary, which is grammatically indexed by always, but also intends to confirm that his secretary is always present when he works in his office, which pragmatically infers that he is never alone. This pragmatic meaning also functions to refute all the accusations leveled against him by Monica that they were alone together when the sexual harassment occurred. Further, Clinton’s use of always in they are, and they’re always open, which is delivered in response to Fisher’s question are there doors at both ends of the hallway?, also targets the confirmation of the meaning that Monica’s allegations are not true. The same holds for never; the negative adverb of frequency is strategically employed not only to communicate negation, its main semantic value, but also to confirm a further pragmatic meaning: Clinton’s innocence. The use of the basic negation marker never in Clinton’s utterances I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, I’ve never had an affair with her, I never saw her in Texas, and I never knew what she was doing there serves to confirm the meaning that Monica does not tell the truth. This meaning can be inferred if the negation marker never is replaced by any other negation auxiliaries. Clinton’s denial of being involved in any sexual affairs with Monica is more representative by the use of never than by any other negation markers.

In the same vein, the pragmatic function of information confirmation is also communicated by the skillful employment of the adverbs certainly and emphatically. Concerning the adverb certainly, it is an epistemic marker that is usually used to communicate certain discourse functions, including proposition truthfulness and proposition emphasis (Blanco, 2018). As usual in the discourse of his trial, Clinton strategically uses certainly in I certainly don’t think so to answer Fisher’s question concerning his sexual relationship with Monica: Have you ever met with Monica Lewinsky in the White House between the hours of midnight and six a.m.? Here, certainly is employed to communicate his innocence and confirm his truthfulness. According to Barbaresi (2009), the epistemic adverb certainly exhibits the discourse function of all attitudinal disjuncts that have the function of the expression I believe. Similarly, emphatically is strategically employed by Clinton to confirm his innocence. Clinton uses emphatically one time throughout his testimony: I emphatically deny it. It did not happen, which comes in response to Fisher’s question regarding Monica’s testimony, in which she accuses Clinton of having a sexual relationship with her: All right, and you deny that testimony? Again, as is the case for certainly, emphatically is used as an evidentiality marker indexing the state of the speaker’s veracity. Using certainly and emphatically, therefore, to answer Fisher’s questions serves to reinforce Clinton’s conviction in the context of the information given previously in the text. Significantly, despite the fact that emphatically is very low in frequency (only 1 occurrence), it is highly indicative in communicating a further intended meaning of the speaker. Furthermore, the pragmatic function carried by both certainly and emphatically is motivated by the two adverbs being intensifiers preceding the negation marker not in It’s certainly not the truth, and the verb deny in I emphatically deny it. In both cases, the two adverbs increase the illocutionary potential of the negation marker in the first sentence and the verb in the second sentence, which serves to highlight the evidential value of the two adverbs as well as their ideological weight as carriers of pragmatic meanings.

5. Discussion

Based on the above analysis, it can be observed that lexicalization, or the use of specific words to communicate further meanings, is one of the key defining aspects of courtroom discourse that is contextually motivated by function and purpose. It is analytically evidenced that the 17 lexemes representing the four lexical categories employed in Clinton’s testimony, within particular contexts, are pragmatically augmented to communicate pragmatic purposes that go beyond their ordinary semantic values. These pragmatic functions include information confirmation, elicitation, denial, verification, uncertainty, dissociation, and clarification. These pragmatic purposes have been motivated by the contextual and co-textual environment in which the selected lexemes occur. That is, the words under investigation interact with context to produce rich pragmatic effects, which correlates with Smith’s (2010) argument that the pragmatics of lexis can be maintained and motivated not only by the individual utilization of the words but also by the contextual environment wherein words occur in texts. Context, therefore, has always been an important component in the interpretation of discourse. Such a significant role shapes the interpretative image of courtroom discourse, which has been emphasized by Coulthard and Johnson (2007), who argue that “context is vital to the understanding and interpretation of legal texts and forensic linguistic analysis” (p. 62). Therefore, the semantic value of lexemes, in certain contexts, is strategically augmented to allow further pragmatic meanings and new communicative values.

Strategic lexicalization in discourse can be said to be based on the message-centered perspective developed by Burleson (2010, p. 151), which constitutes that interpersonal communication is a particular type of social interaction centered on the processes of producing and interpreting messages. For him, such interpersonal communication is also based on a reciprocal relationship of expressive and interpretative intention among interlocutors. The expressive intention refers to the desire of one interlocutor to communicate a specific meaning to his/her recipients, whereas the interpretative intention constitutes the ability of recipients to successfully perceive such specific meanings. This reciprocity of intentional communication has previously been accentuated by Green (1996, p. 13), who argues that the design features of communication directly depend on the intention of interlocutors in the process of communication. Such communicative intentionality is vital to achieving effective message production and efficient understanding among interlocutors. Strategic selection of specific words in discourse is also an intention-oriented process, wherein speakers intentionally choose to use particular words to communicate specific meanings. These meanings, in most cases, are pragmatic in nature, as they often carry meanings that go beyond the semantic value of the selected words. Strategic lexicalization, therefore, is a reciprocally situated process of interpersonal communication. It is not unsystematically employed in discourse but always operates within specific communicative situations and targets specific pragmatic purposes.

It is analytically demonstrated that lexicalization serves to contribute to communicating various pragmatic meanings in courtroom discourse. The findings of this study reconcile with Fowler’s (1991) argument that the usage of specific words in conversation can carry certain ideologies and can target specific pragmatic purposes. The words under investigation are pragmatically loaded to convey particular pragmatic meanings on the part of discourse participants. Similarly, Schaffner (2004) has pointed out that discourse participants intentionally employ specific words to achieve particular purposes. In the current study, it is analytically shown that the 17 lexemes representing the four lexical categories, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are carriers of pragmatic meanings that go beyond their ordinary semantic functionality, which tunes with Fairclough’s (2013) argument that words, regardless of their category, are ideologically loaded. Lexical categories, therefore, are multifunctional discourse devices that constitute the pragmatic dimension of meaning by assigning the role of pragmatic markers motivated by the contextual and co-textual environment wherein they occur. This goes in conformity with Aijmer’s (1997) contention that pragmatic functionality is context-sensitive, as it is influenced by the linguistic context, the cognitive context, and the social contexts constituting the different discourse participants and their attitudes towards each other and towards their propositions.

The analysis further clarifies that the lexemes under investigation are not only content knowledge words but also pragmatic meaning conduits. These pragmatic meanings are communicated by the four lexical categories employed in this paper. Concerning the lexical category of nouns, the analysis identifies four pragmatic functions. These are information dissociation, clarification, confirmation, and verification. In light of this paper, nouns go beyond their referential sense to be used as contextualization cues that signal a specific meaning targeted by interlocutors. Strategic lexicalization, therefore, is one of the cues upon which contextualization is realized in discourse (Gumperz, 1992). Since discourse interpretations “are intrinsically context-bound and cannot be analyzed apart from the verbal sequences in which they are embedded” (Gumperz, 1992, p. 232), the words forming such a verbal sequence and the strategic way they are selected contribute effectively to the process of discourse interpretation. Within their contextual environment in the discourse of Clinton’s trial, nouns, particularly when collocated with other neighboring words, serve to motivate a wider interpretative scope that adds more pragmatic meanings to the discourse as well as to their semantic sense.

Verbs are carriers of various pragmatic meanings in Clinton’s testimony. The analysis demonstrates that they go beyond their semantic sense of predication towards other pragmatic functions, including information confirmation, denial, uncertainty, verification, and elicitation. It is analytically evidenced that the selected verbs function to elicit information when they are used in the interrogative mode, whereas they are employed to convey verification, uncertainty, denial, and confirmation when they are used in the declarative mode. When collocated with the self-referential I, verbs serve to communicate strong commitment to the proposition (as is the case with I know), high degree of evidentiality (as is the case with I believe), and propositional uncertainty (as is the case with I think). Also, the oppositional pairing of admit and deny in the sequence do you admit or deny, which has frequency of 81 in the testimony, functions to communicate a high level of directness in answering. Consequently, the pragmatic force of the selected verbs, which mirrors the intended meaning of the speaker and reflects his personal beliefs, is contextualized by the strong validity of the speaker indexed by I believe, weak validity of the speaker indexed by I think, knowledge indexed by I know, confirmation indexed by I admit, and denial indexed by I deny. Crucially, the contexts wherein these verbs occur assign them the communicative function of signifying the subsequent arguments with a pragmatic force that invites addressees to perceive the speaker’s proposition in the way he/she intends.

In the same vein, adjectives in the analytical light of this paper are not only employed to convey the function of modification; however, they are strategically utilized to communicate other pragmatic purposes, including information confirmation, dissociation, and clarification. As clarified in the analysis, the adjective sexual is a strategic device that aims to contextualize the whole speech event of Clinton’s testimony, particularly when collocated with the noun harassment. Also, sure and aware reflect high levels of certitude and knowledge, respectively, which, in turn, mirror the personal beliefs of the speaker. In all its uses in the trial at hand, sure assigns the role of an assertive predicate that represents a strong commitment to the truth of the proposition presented, which further emphasizes its pragmatic force in confirming a given proposition. What is intended beyond such confirmation is that the speaker attempts to envelop his/her argument with certainty and veracity in order to influence the addresses’ reaction to adopt his/her argument without suspicion. Likewise, the adjective aware reflects a high level of understanding that the intended meaning is well perceived by the addressee.

As for the pragmatics of the lexical category of adverbs, despite the fact that the four adverbs used in this study are grammatically categorized as frequency (always, never) and certainty (certainly, emphatically) adverbs (Quirk et al., 1985), they are strategically recruited to communicate further pragmatic purposes, namely information confirmation and denial. The semantic value of the four lexemes is pragmatically enriched to allow more meanings that target the speaker’s goals. In the case of always and never, the two words represent the speaker’s subjective commitment to the truth of the proposition presented. The idea that certainly and emphatically are strategically employed in Clinton’s testimony to support a further pragmatic function is similar, to some extent, to Hyland’s (2005, p. 52) argument that such adverbs are “boosters,” which, for him, are words that allow writers/speakers “to close down alternatives, head off conflicting views and express their certainty in what they say.” As such, both certainly and emphatically implicate a high degree of evidentiality, contextually activating their employment to intensify Clinton’s conviction regarding the confirmation of the information he presents. Consequently, it can be claimed that the four adverbs used in Clinton’s testimony are information confirmation intensifiers. In other words, they can be perceived as illocutionary adverbs since they increase the illocutionary potential of the utterance wherein they occur. Crucially, the very low frequency of the adverb emphatically accentuates the idea that, within the scope of CL, not only high-frequency words are indicative in addressing a discourse topic, but also low-frequency words are highly effective in the linguistic analysis of texts. Such a pragmatic weight of the one-occurrence lexeme has been revealed by means of CDA, whose main concern focuses on revealing the hidden meanings of discourse (Fairclough, 2013). This, in turn, highlights the extent to which CL and CDA are analytically complementary.

Further, the analysis of the selected data highlights the analytically integrative relationship between CL and CDA. It is analytically demonstrated that CL techniques are effectively relevant to discourse studies. The FDA, which is adopted in the current study, is one of these techniques that serves to support the whole linguistic analysis of the selected data in all its stages: descriptively, interpretatively, and explanatory. The analysis clarifies the extent to which an FDA contributes to revealing the various pragmatic functions communicated by the selected lexemes in this study. This has been conducted by clarifying the number of occurrences each lexeme has as well as the indicative occurrences of each word, which are also determined by the contextual environment wherein each word occurs. The assumption that applying various CL techniques to the linguistic investigation of discourse is effective correlates with the findings approached by many previous studies such as Conrad (2002), who argues that CL methods are usually utilized to address various discourse phenomena, including “characteristics associated with the use of a language feature,” “realizations of a particular function,” “characterizing a variety of language,” and “mapping the occurrences of a feature through entire texts.” This, in turn, sheds light on the contribution of CL not only to political, social, and ideological discourse studies (Baker, 2006) but also to courtroom discourse within different legal settings (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007; Potts & Kjær, 2016).

Approaching strategic lexicalization in courtroom discourse and its contribution to lexical pragmatics, therefore, shows the pragmatic weight of words in the interpretation of discourse and accentuates the significance of the pragmatic dimension of meaning at the lexical level. The pragmaticalization of lexis, therefore, contributes effectively to the interpretation of courtroom discourse. This finding has also been highlighted by Zejnilović et al. (2023), who discuss the significance of studying the different pragmatic concepts in judicial settings by shedding light on the pragmatics of meta-argumentative verbs in legal discourse and the extent to which they convey specific pragmatic meanings. It is analytically evidenced in this paper that the investigation of the pragmatic dimension of lexical categories in the selected trial contributes to the discourse interpretation of the whole speech event, which also correlates with Brochhagen et al. (2018), who argue that the interpretation of an utterance is not only a product of the conventional semantic meaning presented by the linguistic expression but also depends on general pragmatic rules on language use constituting such utterances.

6. Conclusion

This study adopted a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to investigate the extent to which the 17 selected lexemes representing the four lexical categories, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are strategically employed in Clinton’s testimony to communicate further pragmatic purposes that go beyond their semantic functionality. By using the FDA, the paper showed that the selected trial abounds in lexical categories that are dexterously used to communicate different pragmatic functions in the trial at hand. The paper demonstrated that discourse pragmatics cannot be only traced in texts at the level of the complete utterance; however, lexical pragmatics, i.e., the pragmatics at the level of the word, also contributes effectively to the interpretation of discourse. The analysis showed that lexical categories are not only content knowledge units but also pragmatic function carriers. Within particular contexts, they go beyond their ordinary semantic value and referential sense towards further pragmatic purposes.

This paper started out with three research questions. First, what are the pragmatic functions conveyed by the selected lexemes used in Clinton’s testimony? The analysis demonstrated a number of pragmatic functions communicated by the strategic employment of the 17 lexemes at hand. These pragmatic functions revolve around the information presented in the testimony, namely via confirmation, verification, clarification, denial, perception, uncertainty, and elicitation. These pragmatic purposes are contextualized by the strategic use of the selected lexemes indexed textually by their collocational and connotational attributes in discourse. Second, how does a frequency distribution analysis contribute to communicating these pragmatic functions? It is analytically evidenced that the work of CL manifested in the FDA adopted in this study contributes effectively to revealing the various intended meanings targeted by interlocutors. This is conducted by highlighting the frequency of the selected lexemes as well as their indicative occurrences in the discourse of the trial, which is also motivated by the keyword-in-context variable. Third, to what extent do CL and CDA contribute to revealing the pragmatics of the selected lexemes used in Clinton’s impeachment trial? The analysis highlighted the effective integration of CL and CDA to reveal the pragmatic purposes conveyed by the selected lexemes employed in Clinton’s testimony. The identification of these pragmatic purposes is analytically based on both the FDA quantitatively applied to the lexemes under investigation, and the critical interpretation qualitatively conducted on the contextual environment wherein these lexemes occur in the trial at hand. Such analytical amalgamation serves to show the reciprocal connection between the formal semantic and quantitative features of the selected lexemes and the pragmatic force they carry in terms of the interpersonal interactions of interlocutors and the contexts wherein they occur.

6.1. Recommendations for further research

For future research, this paper has a number of recommendations. First, it recommends an intensive linguistic investigation of the strategic use of other categories in language. For example, the pragmatic use of function words, such as pronouns and modals, and the extent to which they can be loaded with various ideological and pragmatic purposes in discourse. Second, a linguistic discussion of the pragmatics of lexical categories in discourse settings other than courtrooms, particularly in fiction, is also recommended and might provide useful insights into the concept of lexical pragmatics in fiction, and the way lexical categories contribute to the interpretation of literary texts. These studies could yield similar and/or different findings than those approached in the current study. Third, further applications of CL techniques are recommended for other corpus-assisted discourse studies and in various discourse settings. This could also yield more reliable and accurate results in linguistic analysis than traditional linguistic investigation, specifically in terms of achieving a high degree of data representativeness and reducing the analysts’ cognitive bias. Fourth, pedagogically, the current study recommends an effective application of the different computer-assisted text analysis software to teaching and learning English as a foreign language courses, particularly to big data texts such as novels and drama texts. This is anticipated to achieve better learning outcomes than traditional teaching and learning techniques.

Acknowledgments

This study is supported via funding from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, project number (PSAU/2023/R/1444).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayman Khafaga

Ayman Khafaga is currently Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English, College of Science & Humanities, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. Also, he is a standing Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Suez Canal University, Egypt. He published in many international journals, such as Journal of Pragmatics (Elsevier), Journal of Psycholinguistic Research (Springer Nature), Linguistics Vanguard (Walter de Gruyter), Language Testing in Asia (Springer Nature), Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer Nature), Frontiers in Psychology (Frontiers Media S.A.), among others. His research interests include corpus linguistics, semiotics, stylistics, critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and semantics.