A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF SELECTED MARRIAGE DISSOLUTION PROCEEDINGS IN THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT, ABUJA

Abstract

This study examined a critical discourse analysis of selected marriage
dissolution proceedings in the Federal High Court, Abuja to investigate
the linguistic choices deployed by both respondents and petitioners to
request for Court’s endorsement. Ten purposively sampled cases
decided in the Federal High Court of Abuja between 2016 and 2017
constituted the data for the study. The hearings were witnessed, taperecorded and transcribed to extract relevant sentence structures which
contained the linguistic means of analysis. The identified expressions
were interrogated using qualitative method of analysis by relying on the
linguistic tool of nominalisation, an aspect of Critical Discourse
Analysis' theoretical framework pioneered by Jeffries. The findings
revealed that both the petitioners and the respondents utilize copious
examples of nominalised constructions to convey their opinions and
dispositions towards the marriage. The petitioners and the respondents
also rely on word nominalisation to present their worldviews about
their partners as well as their unpalatable experiences in the marriage,
which warranted their call for dissolution of the marriages. The study
suggested that other CDA tools like enumerating, passivisation,
modality, transitivity and negation could also be applied to marriage
dissolution cases to determine stance and face in proceedings.