Investigating Judges’ Verbal Interactions with Lawyers in Mashhad from the Perspective of Forensic Sociolinguistics

The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of the social variables of age, gender and education of lawyers on the verbal interactions of judges with them in legal events in the framework of forensic sociolinguistics. The statistical population of the research includes lawyers in Mashhad, Iran, and the sample selection method is purposeful sampling until the saturation of information is reached. The research approach is qualitative research, its analysis method is thematic analysis and its tool is semi-structured interview. The subject of the research is to investigate the verbal interactions of judges with lawyers in legal events, such as hearings, interrogations, investigations and trials, in Mashhad, in 1401. For this purpose, the contents and themes of the interviews were coded in three stages. In an interview with 24 volunteers from available lawyers, it was found that superior and subordinate relationships prevail in legal events, and many judges exercise power through language. The results of the research show that the age, gender and education of lawyers have an effect on the way the judge speaks to them, answers and even issues a verdict. Gender has been of special importance and gender stereotypes are very prominent in this field. One of the important issues expressed by the lawyers in the interviews was the importance of the personality of the judge and the personality of the lawyer in the verbal interactions of the judges with the lawyers, which indicates that the personality of the people themselves is much more important and influential than their age, gender and education. In addition, increasing age is also an important variable, and many lawyers stated that the behavior of appeal judges is usually better because they are older, and lawyers also act more mature with increasing age. After all, in general, judges deal better with older lawyers both in tone and type of speech.