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A Generic Structure Analysis of Nigerian Appellate Court Judgements
Donatus Emenike
Delta State Polytechnic,
Ogwashi-Uku Felix Nwabeze Ogoanah
University of Benin, Benin City
Abstract
Appellate judgements have continued to play important roles in the ordering of the society and directing legal practice, hence their significance as sites of academic enquiry. Existing studies on Nigerian appellate judgement texts have concentrated more on grammatical features and power and the linguistic means of achieving same in courtroom discourse, particularly lawyer/judge and witness interactions. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to investigate the move structures of Nigerian appellate judgements in order to show their communicative relevance. Three judgements were randomly selected from the Nigerian Supreme Court website. The English for Specific Purposes (ESP) genre theory is applied to the interpretation of data. The study shows Nigerian appellate judgement texts have six move structures comprising recognizable steps. These are: identifying the case with four steps; stating case history with four steps; arguing the case (one move-step); deriving ratio decindendi; pronouncing judgement; and validating the judgment. The authors argue that the study has pedagogical implications, especially in the areas of teaching and curriculum development. For instance, the findings can aid the understanding of appellate judgement in terms of composition and interpretation. Furthermore, the knowledge espoused can also be used in developing curriculum for English teaching in the legal domain.
