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9 JLL 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/jlangaw9 and id is 1 raw text is: International Journal of LANGUAGE & LAW Guilldn Nieto, J LL 9 (2020): 1-22 Defamation as a Language Crime -A Sociopragmatic Approach to Defamation Cases in the High Courts of Justice of Spain Victoria Guillin Nieto* Abstract The investigation of language crimes is one of the expert areas of forensic linguistics as a fo- rensic science that analyses language as evidence. This paper focuses on a particular type of language crime: defamation. This is an offence perpetrated, primarily, with malicious lan- guage-either written language (libel), spoken language (slander), or technospeech (Gar- field, 2011:17)-that involves social emotions and intentional false communication and harms a person's dignity, prestige, and reputation in the social community. Since the 198os, linguists have tried to shed light on defamation as a language crime from various linguistic theories such as speech act theory, semantics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, as shown in works by Durant (1996:195-210), Hancher (1980: 245-256), Kniffka (2007:113-148), Shuy (2010) and Ti- ersma (1987: 303-350). In this paper, we take a different path in suggesting a socio pragmatics- based approach to the analysis of defamation, with special reference to impoliteness (Cul- peper, 2011; Spencer-Oatey, 2005: 95-119). The questions we discuss are: (1) Is the theory of impoliteness appropriate for evidencing actionable offence in cases involving defamation? (2) How do the High Courts of Justice of Spain appraise defamatory meaning? (3) Does conven- tionalised formulaic impoliteness promote guilty verdicts? And (4) Does non-conventional- ised impoliteness support acquittals?This piece of research is grounded in empirical data, par- ticularly in a corpus of15o judgments for cases of defamation given bythe High Courts of Jus- tice of Spain between 2013 and 2017. Keywords forensic linguistics, High Courts of Justice of Spain, impoliteness, language as evidence, Ian- guage crimes Submitted: 3 March 2019, accepted: 2April 2020, published online:9 April 2020 * University of Alicante, toa.gu i as. The author would like to thank the editors and reviewers for careful reading, thoughtful comments, and constructive suggestions for this article. International Journal of Language & Law vol. 9 (2020) 1 DOI .

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