Discourse Strategies of Defendant’s Responses in Court: A Study of Maryam Sanda’s Murder Case

Abstract

Forensic Discourse Analysis is gaining momentum in the world of linguistics today, especially in Europe and America. However, this field of study has enjoyed fairly little attention from scholars in Nigeria. It is domiciled in Applied Linguistics. This paper deploys discourse-linguistic tools to interrogate the discourse strategies in the responses of Maryam Sanda, accused of murder during cross-examination and re-examination in court. It also deploys framing and stance-taking as essential tools for effective analysis in Forensic Discourse. Teun van Dijk's (2001) Socio-Cognitive Model was found suitable for the analysis of the 112-page document of judgment delivered by   Justice Y. Halilu of the Federal High Court, Jabi, Abuja. Purposive sampling method was deployed to select the corpus. The paper found that Maryam Sanda’s responses reveal key discourse strategies that align with Van Dijk’s Ideological Square Model, including self-positive representation and others-negative representation. Through carefully structured verbal constructions, she portrays herself as a loving wife and mother while subtly demonising the deceased by emphasising his alleged aggression. Findings also reveal that she employs blame-framing and stance-taking to shift responsibility, strategically denying incriminating evidence and portraying the incident as an unfortunate consequence of her husband’s actions rather than her own. These findings contribute to forensic linguistics by demonstrating how accused persons use linguistic strategies to construct narratives that mitigate guilt, influence courtroom perceptions, and navigate legal proceedings.