Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

24explain that after the police investigation (in which the author of the crime is charged)the parties should present all their considerations, report the facts in detail, and describewhat happened from the opening of the police inquiry to the moment of the closingargument. The basic function of the closing argument is to request the defendant‘sconviction or acquittal and/or the reduction of the sentence. The parties should constructtheir thesis (of accusation and defence) according to the types of crimes defined by thePenal Code, because penalties will be applied according to this classification. The judgedecides which request from the parties is more valid, taking into account theirarguments. When the parties are not satisfied with the outcome of the judge‘s decisionthey can appeal to Courts of Criminal Appeal.Studies on judgments have focused on several of the aspects that characterizethis legal genre. Bhatia (1993) and Maley (1985) have concentrated on themacrostructure of judgments, on the realization of its communicative purposes throughlanguage, and on their intertextual characteristics. In particular, Bhatia (1989) hasargued that this kind of information can be useful for teaching English for AcademicPurposes. The author (1993: 118) explains that legal cases display a four-movestructure, which corresponds to its conventionalized internal structure and fulfilscommunicative purposes. In move one, the case is identified. In move two, the facts ofthe case are identified. In move three, the case is argued by stating the history of thecase, by presenting the arguments, and by deriving ratio decidendi (the principle of lawthat the judge wished to set down for application to future cases of a similardescription). Finally, move four corresponds to the final decision.Judgments have also been studied from a bilingual/binational point of view. Forinstance, Engberg (1997) compared the linguistic and textual conventions of Danish andGerman judgments, namely by investigating the speech acts performed within the genreso as to point to differences in the use of these devices in German and Danish