Gricean maxims in courtroom discourse- an analysis of the supreme court proceedings of the 2020 presidential election petition in Ghana

Abstract

This study examines the observance and non-observance of the Gricean Maxims as used by petitioner’s witness and counsels during the cross examination session of the 2020 Presidential Election Petition in the supreme court of Ghana. The study investigates the possible implicatures drawn from the non-observance of the maxims amongst the petitioner’s witness and counsels. A qualitative content analysis, data is drawn from conversational transcripts of petitioner’s witness and counsels for respondents during the cross-examination phase of the 2020 Presidential Election Petition. Employing Grice’s theory of Cooperative Principle and implicature, the findings show that there was the observance of all the maxims (quantity, quality, relation/relevance and manner) from both the witness for petitioner and the counsels for first and second respondents. The maxim of manner appeared as the most dominant observed maxim. It also revealed that violations occurred 82 times and flouting appeared 91 times as non-observance cases recorded amongst petitioner’s witness as well as the counsels for the respondents. The reasons for violating and flouting the maxims could generally be for the purposes of building public image, mislead the court, skip relevant questions and for emphasis. Furthermore, violating and flouting the maxims were purposefully done to give additional information to the court. The findings further suggest that, witness and counsels tend to flout and violate the maxims to demonstrate command over language usage which was least recorded in terms of frequency. The study affirms Grice’s position that, Cooperative Principle advances the assumption that participants in a conversation normally attempt to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. Moreover, it is recommended that, critical attention should be given to how language is used by people in cross-examinations to present their testimonies during court trials.