Topics of positive self-representation
94 all charges upon him as well as blacklists the corrupt prosecutor and the liar
victim from the prosecutorial trial. On the other hand, in describing in-group Haller and his client, Haller
describes his client in positive terms in order to lead people to think that his client is the real victim of a set up case in this trial. Moreover, negative other-
representation and positive self-representation are intended to create an idea that Haller, as a defense lawyer is altruist. It is done by asserting issue that the
prosecutor is a threat for innocent people and he has tarnished American trial. The reason is that the prosecutor provokes the police and the DA to fake the
evidence file in order to win the lawsuit. Therefore, by firing the prosecutor, it would take advantage for other innocent defendants, because there will be no
more corrupt prosecutor who attempts to imprison innocent people. Furthermore, the discourse elements as the discursive strategies have a great
role in legitimizing the ideology of exclusion in order to eliminate the adversaries prosecutor and the victim.
From the topics above, the negative representation of prosecutor, police, and the DA are legitimated by the use of discursive strategies such as
rhetorical question, syntax, expression, coherence, disclaimer, and lexicon. The discussion of the discourse element which consistently supports and
indicates this ideological exclusion is shown as follows.
1 Stylistics of Lexicon Element
This element is used to serve the information which is only beneficial to the in-group and then to create a negative description of out-group. Lexicon
95 element is used to give a negative labelling to the adversaries by applying
diction or words choices in order to create negative portrayal against them. The application of certain diction is used by Haller in describing the negative
action of the prosecutor. It can be seen in following utterances. “Prosecutor
and DA had phonied up the evident file in order to win the lawsuit .”Here, the
phrase phonied up ” is used by Haller to legitimize this topic.
Lexicalization also has a significant role in describing positive self- representation about Roulet. Haller uses diction
such as “the man” as it can be examined in his question to police who act as witnesses for the victim as
follows. “Did she tell you who the man was?” and “You specifically asked if
she knew t he man?” Haller uses the diction “the man” instead of using the
diction such as “the attacker” in order to refer Roulet. By applying this lexicon
strategy, the defendant appears as if he did not do anything bad during the crime happened.
2 Syntax
The syntax element is used to provide a negative representation of the adversaries by the use of active or negative sentence. It is used to portray the
victim, witness, and the prosecutor as the active agent in conducting the negative action dealing with the case. The examples of topics and the
application of syntactic element can be seen as follows. “Corliss is never
charged with perjury since he deliberately sent by the police ” this topic is
legitimized by the use of the active sentence as follows. Haller :
“They phonied up the evidence file”;