Speech and Gesture in Forensic Linguistics in Bribery Case: Towards Semantics and Pragmatics of “Closed” Discourses

Abstract

The paper deals with analysis of verbal and nonverbal information in dialogues about bribes. The dialogue about bribes is one of the types of so called "closed" discourse in which explicit expression of communicative intention is forbidden or at any case legally restricted. Closed discourses are opposed to open ones, in which there are no significant prohibitions on the expression of certain meanings. The restriction on explicit verbalization of bribes leads to contradiction between the need for speakers to express their thoughts clearly, on one hand, and prohibitions of a legal nature – on another. One of the ways to solve this problem is to use non-verbal channels to transfer information – in particular gestures. In dialogues about bribes gesture often replaces and complements speech acts of participants. Examples of interaction between speech of participants of dialogues and their non-verbal behavior are considered. Linguistic semantics and linguistic pragmatics are shown as a metalanguage that allows to transfer sense at the non-verbal level of communication in dialogues about bribes. For this purpose, it is proposed to use metalanguages of non-verbal semiotics and the formal representation of the plot, based on the narrative grammars. The study and description of the interaction between the level of speech and the level of non-verbal communication (primary gestures) is necessary for forensic linguistics in bribery cases. The study of the rules of interaction between verbal and non-verbal is necessary not only for applied linguistics – in particular forensic linguistics, but also for linguistic theory.