Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the exercise of institutional power through questions presented by former judge Sergio Moro in former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s questioning in may 2017. For this, the questions asked by the former judge at that moment will be analyzed. Questioning is a well-known tool in Linguistics to exercise power, however, regarding the defendant’s questioning, no research on Brazilian judicial setting was found. In order to contribute to this research gap, this paper investigates, by means of mixed methods, the control the former judge exercises through his questions, and the extent to which the former judge’s utterances have adversarial traits. This study draws on Teun A. van Dijk’s (2018 VAN DIJK, Teun A. Socio-Cognitive Discourse Studies. In: FLOWERDEW, John; RICHARDSON, John E. (orgs.). The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Londres: Taylor &Francis Group, 2018. ) approach to critical discourse studies as the main underlying framework. The results show the former judge’s questioning style on that questioning carries accusatory traits and resembles police interviews.
Keywords
Forensic Linguistics; critical discourse studies; institutional power; defendant’s questioning of former president Lula; questions to the defendant
