This book examines fifty-two apologetic allocutions produced during federal sentencing hearings. Defendants raised the topics of the offense, mitigation, future behavior, and the sentence in diverse ways, and this book explores the pros and cons associated with different forms. Because we have no way of ascertaining exactly how effective (or ineffective) an individual allocution is, case law, sociolinguistic and historical resources, and judges’ final remarks are used to develop hypotheses about defendants’ communicative goals as well as what might constitute an ideal defendant stance from a j ... More

This book examines fifty-two apologetic allocutions produced during federal sentencing hearings. Defendants raised the topics of the offense, mitigation, future behavior, and the sentence in diverse ways, and this book explores the pros and cons associated with different forms. Because we have no way of ascertaining exactly how effective (or ineffective) an individual allocution is, case law, sociolinguistic and historical resources, and judges’ final remarks are used to develop hypotheses about defendants’ communicative goals as well as what might constitute an ideal defendant stance from a judge’s point of view. Defendants’ actual statements are assessed against this backdrop. The corpus is unique because the transcripts used for this study include paralinguistic features such as hesitations, wavering voice, and crying while talking. Among its highlights, the book proposes that although a ritualized apology formula (e.g., “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”) would appear to be a good fit for the context of allocution and even to be expected, the use of such formulas carries implications in this context that do not serve defendants' communicative goals. The book argues that the application of Austin’s (1962) performative-constative continuum reveals that offense-related utterances that fall closer to the constative end are more consistent with the discursive constraints on the speech event of allocution. Further, it proposes that the ideologies associated with allocution, in particular the belief that allocution functions as a protection for defendants, obscure the ways in which the context constrains what defendants can say and how effectively they can say it.