TICLAUS
Transitivity in Courtroom Language: A Unified Solution
Affiliated organizations
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 838444.
The TICLAUS project combines four areas of linguistics, namely Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Corpus Linguistics (CL), Forensic Linguistics (FL) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The reason for doing so is that the aim here is twofold. On the one hand, TICLAUS strives to make theoretical advances within the field of SFL, through applying CDA and CL methods to analyse language and, thus, improve upon the two transitivity systems currently in use in linguistics. On the other hand, using a revised and enhanced transitivity model, TICLAUS intends to reveal how language use inside the courtroom may in fact be a contributing factor of wrongful convictions. To add to this, through informal interviews with individuals who have experienced sexual assault or, otherwise, been wrongfully convicted, TICLAUS will shed light on how two types of survivor represent their experience of victimhood through language; simultaneously, the analysis aims to give both survivors their voice back. There is a dearth of transitivity research in FL, not to mention a shortage of studies that examine wrongful convictions in particular and, as such, TICLAUS is expected to help fill this gap.