Impartially prosecuting “the total contempt for the Constitution”: Evaluative lexis in the criminal complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor of Catalonia against Carme Forcadell i Lluís

Abstract

This paper proposes a semantic-discursive study of the two criminal complaints filed by the Public Prosecutor of Catalonia against Mrs. Carme Forcadell i Lluís, President of the Catalan Parliament, and against key members of the Catalan Parliament’s Bureau for the crimes of disobedience and misconduct. Combining sentiment analysis, corpus linguistics and appraisal theory, this study denies the idea according to which a criminal complaint seeks the application of general norms to concrete cases in an objective fashion. Far from being factual or ideational, the Prosecutor’s utterances are laden with interpersonal meanings and reveal subjective implication with a vehemence reminiscent of political invective.