The Linguistic Features of Some Selected Murder Cases from Ethiopian Federal High Courtrooms

Abstract

Abstract

In Ethiopia, police and prosecutor investigations of murder cases are doubted to define the guilty mind of the suspect. To overwhelm the challenge, the study has presented the implementation of linguistic knowledge to support and substantiate evidence in advancing accurate fact-finding. The study has proposed the following questions (1) what linguistic features do attest in murder cases? And (2) how does a linguistic tool help to detect fabricated expressions of suspects and testimonies? To answer these questions, the study has employed a qualitative method and collected defendants' statements and text and voice corpus from the federal high courts. The result showed that suspects in murder cases use distorting, manipulating pieces of information, and violating maxims of conversation, mentally to escape from the crime scene but not deny the crime completely. Besides, the linguistic cues identified in the study are the result of suspects’ mental escape; these cues are the tense of the verb, temporal lacuna, change in references, social introduction, and passive voice.