A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ENGLISH AND KURDISH CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION TEXTS

In spite of the increasing numbers of studies on criminal texts, it can be argued that these texts have not received considerable attention from a pragmatic point of view specially in Kurdish as compared to English. The study aims at studying pragmatically the interaction between the participants of this text. It also aims at investigating the strategies used by investigators to elicit suspects' confessions as well as the strategies used by the suspects to protect their positions in both English and Kurdish. It is hypothesized that: (1) There are significant differences between English and Kurdish investigation texts in terms of linguistic, stylistic, discoursal and pragmatic features. (2) English and Kurdish suspects employ different speech strategies in drawing implicatures and protecting their positions against the accusations raised by the investigators. (3) English and Kurdish investigators use different strategies in their attempts to elicit information from the suspects. (4) There are significant differences in the strategies used by English and Kurdish suspects and investigators due to cultural and sociolinguistic differences.