A COMPARATIVE FORENSIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MURDER CONFESSION STATEMENTS IN PAKISTAN AND USA

Abstract

This study examines how confessional discourse is constructed in murder cases across two distinct legal jurisdictions, Pakistan and the United States of America. Rather than treating confessions as straightforward admissions of guilt, this research approaches them as institutionally produced, linguistically mediated narratives that are shaped by power dynamics, cultural contexts, and interrogation practices. Drawing on Forensic Discourse Analysis (FDA) and Van Leeuwen's Social Actor Theory, the study investigates how language functions to assign, suppress, or redistribute agency and accountability in confessional texts. A qualitative comparative approach was adopted, with purposive sampling used to select two high-profile murder cases — one from each jurisdiction — that offered linguistic richness for analysis. Data were drawn from secondary sources including reconstructed confessional statements, legal summaries, court records, and media reports. Analysis focused on key linguistic features such as pronoun use, modality, lexical choice, hedging, narrative structure, and social actor representation. Findings reveal that confessions from the Pakistani context tend towards passivation, impersonalization, and suppression of agency, whereby actions are described with diminished personal accountability and responsibility is often externalized to situational forces. In contrast, American confessions demonstrate clear activation of the accused as a social actor; however, this activation is consistently accompanied by emotional rationalization, psychological justification, and narrative mitigation. In both cases, institutional power structures play a decisive role in shaping the language and content of confessional discourse. The study contributes to the growing field of forensic linguistics by providing a cross-jurisdictional analysis that highlights the non-neutral, socially constructed nature of confessional language. It further underscores the practical need for forensic linguistic awareness in legal proceedings, particularly in murder cases where the evidentiary weight of a confession is especially significant.