The study presented in this chapter contributes to a small but growing body of research within forensic and legal contexts on linguistic manifestations of stance – a speaker or writer’s culturally shaped ‘personal feelings, attitudes, value judgements, or assessments’ about a theme, recipient or proposition (Biber et al. 1999: 966) – which can be expressed subtly or boldly through the lexico-grammatical choices one makes (Biber 2006). Specifically, this pilot study examines one particular legal context – that of parole board hearings in which certain populations are being disproportionately denied parole (ACLU 2015). The data are from two parole-denied hearings where the pair was matched by crime type, gender, age, parole eligibility status and treatment requirements.

This study highlights the value of using the framework of Appraisal Analysis (Martin and White 2005), given its rich resources for examining affective stances (markers of emotion) and epistemic stances (markers of commitment). The results reveal differences in the ways in which the convicted persons negotiated interpersonal meaning, which may have contributed to the two very different non-parole outcomes, ultimately supporting the value of investigating stance in forensic and legal contexts that may have life-changing consequences.