Crafting moral legitimation: insights from lawyers’ strategic deployment of Attitude resources in civil trials

Abstract This study investigates how lawyers strategically employ Attitude resources of Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation to construct moral legitimation in civil trials. Drawing on verbatim transcripts from 12 Chinese civil trial videos, the analysis examines lawyers’ deployment of these resources, with a focus on their subtypes, targets, polarity, and ways of realization. The findings reveal that Affect: dis/inclination, Judgement: propriety/capacity, and Appreciation: valuation/composition are dominant Attitude subtypes in lawyers’ argumentation. They are typically employed to target plaintiff/defendant, non-witness third parties, the court, evidence, and non-evidence entities, with positive/negative polarity tendencies. Predominantly inscribed and with limited instances of invoked Judgement, these resources contribute to the evaluation and abstraction types of moral legitimation. The strategic construction of moral legitimation by Attitude resources operates via hierarchical and binary mechanisms, stemming, respectively, from the inherent hierarchy among the appraised targets and the interplay between positive/negative polarity tendencies. This nuanced exploration illuminates the intricate relationship between linguistic strategies and power dynamics within courtroom discourse, offering valuable insights for enhancing persuasive techniques in legal argumentation.