Analyzing Court Discourse based on Gricean Cooperative Principles: A Case of Forensic Linguistics

The present study examines the impact of the usage of the principles of Grice’s (1975) cooperative principles of Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner in legal discourse based on the observance of such rules and principles of conversation in defense sessions of ISIS defendants attacking the Islamic Consultative Assembly and Imam Khomeini Holy Shrine. Data of the present descriptive-qualitative study was collected from fifty 10-minute video files from the 20:30 TV program and Aparat Web site in various defense sessions of the defendants of attacking the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini. Findings showed that Gricean maxims were violated in terms of Quantity but the court interlocutors followed Relevance maxim in the court exchanges. The lowest frequency was observed in the Quality maxim since the speakers avoid appropriate and true conversations in the court. Results also revealed that defendants violated all the maxims compared with judges and martyrs' families.