Ideology Behind the Assassination Attack: A Forensic Discourse Analysis of Confessional Statements

Abstract

The present research is based on the Forensic Discourse Analysis of two confessional statements given by the criminal Mr. Naveed before the police who tried to kill Pakistan’s renowned political leader Imran Khan, Chairperson, Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf during a public rally (long march). These were aired on public and private news channels in Pakistan. Confessional statements are bilingual (i.e., Urdu and Punjabi). These are transcribed into Roman Urdu and then translated into English. The data are analysed under Gricean’s Model (1975) by Paul Grice where four maxims of conversation are checked and observed how those maxims are followed as well as violated by the criminal in his responses. The lexical items that explicitly show the hidden ideology behind this breach of the social contract are also pointed out. This study will provide an understanding of how criminals manipulate the facts by violating the maxims of conversation either intentionally or unintentionally during the police investigation. The study aims to present how the criminal used different ideologies to justify their committed crimes and in the instant case, the criminal used religion as a shield and justification for his wrongdoing. This study will also shed light on the importance of Forensic Linguistics as well as the Language of Law.