The Language of Law: A Narrative Stylistics Analysis of Philippine Supreme

Court Decisions on Rape Cases

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented to
The Department of English
College of Arts and Social Sciences
Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology
Iligan City

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Bachelor of Arts in English

Sitty Nor_Aisah M. Pumbaya

Jasmerah P. Amod

MARCH 2017
 ABSTRACT

This research entitled “The Language of law: A Narrative Stylistic Analysis of

Philippine Supreme Court Decisions on Rape Cases” aims to study the linguistic
features of the Language of Law using the Stylistic and Narratology as a method.
Specifically the study used the Supreme Court Decisions on Rape Cases to analyze
the linguistic features and how it may reveal a form of violence in the context of Rape
Cases.

This study specifically answered the following research questions:

1. What linguistic features indicate violence?

2. What are the forms of violence revealed in rape narratives?
3. How do narrative structures perpetuate the language violence in law?
4. What are the implications of the embedded representation of violence in the
language of law to the society?

This paper studies (1) the representation of violence reflected on the narratives
of rape cases through Narrative Structure and Stylitsic Features (2) identify and
describe the kinds of violence embedded in the rape narratives, (3) describe the
perpetuation of the embedded violence through the narrative structure (4) describe the
implications of these violence in the language of law to the society.

The result reveals various form of covert violence committed by the Supreme Court
through (1) Biases, (2) Double-standards, (3) usage of ellipses (4) downplaying.
These embedded representations of violence represents that there are pre-existing
interests and beliefs when it comes to rape cases that the law and its legal practitioner
upholds
 The study recommends the use of the same methods to explore other
narratives of criminal cases such as murder, treason, or even robbery, it is also
possible to use this study as a foundation in analyzing oral discourse in the language
of law such as cross-examinations or depositions and lastly, this study recommends
future researches to explore categorizing the different forms of violence that could
found in the language of law.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

TITLE PAGE……………………………………………………………………. i

APPROVAL SHEET……………………………………………………………. ii

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………….. iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………….. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………….................. v

LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………................... vi

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the study ………………………….... 1

1.2 Theoretical Framework ……………………............. 3
1.3 Conceptual Framework ……………………............. 5
1.4 Statement of the Problem ……………………….… . 8
1.5 Significance of the Study …………………………. . 8
1.6 Scope and the Limitation ………………………….. 9
1.7 Definition of terms ………………………………… 10

CHAPTER

II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 12

2.1 Langauge, Linguistics, Law, Violence …………….. 12

 2.1.1 Language and Linguistics ………………………….. 12
2.1.2 Language and Law …………………………………. 14
2.1.3 Law and Literature …………………………………. 15
2.2 Legal Narratives ……………………………………. 17
2.3 Violence ……………………………………………. 19
2.3.1 Violence in the Context of Law ……………………. 20
2.3.2 Rape in the Philippines ……………………………... 23
2.4 Narrative Stylistics …………………………………. 24
2.4.1 Narratology ……………………………………….... 25
2.4.2 Stylistics ……………………………………………. 27
2.5 Context: Supreme Court of the
Philippines and the Language of Law ……………... 36

CHAPTER

III METHODOLOGY 39

3.1 Research Design …………………………………... 38

3.2 Corpus of the Study ……………………………….. 38
3.3 Data Analysis ……………………………………… 39

CHAPTER

IV PRESENTATION OF DATA AND ANALYSIS … ..40

4.1 Summary of Resolution ……………………………. 40

4.1.1 G.R No. 186469 ……………………………………. 40

4.1.2 G.R No. 188851 ……………………………………. 40
4.1.3 G.R No. 177747 ……………………………………. 41
4.1.4 G.R No. 187734 ……………………………………. 41
4.1.5 G.R No. 187744 ……………………………………. 42
4.1.6 G.R No. 181491 ……………………………………. 42
4.2 Stylistic ……........................................................... 42

4.2.1 Lexical Categories ……………………………………42

4.2.1a Nouns ………………………………………………. 42
4.2.1b Adjectives ………………………………………….. 48
4.2.1c Verbs ……………………………………………….. 53
 4.2.1d Adverbs …………………………………………….. 63
4.2.2 Grammatical Categories ……………………………. 64
4.2.3 Context and Cohesion ……………………………… 77
4.2.3a Cohesion ……………………………………………. 77
4.2.3b Context ……………………………………………… 88
4.3 Narratology …………………………………………. 94
4.3.1a Voice ...................................................................... 94
4.3.1b Focalization ………………………………………… 99

CHAPTER
V SUMMARY, CONCLUSION,
AND RECOMMENDATION …………………….. 103
5.1 Summary …………………………………………... 103
5.1.1 Research Objectives and Summary ……………….. 103
5.1.2 Summary of Results ……………………………….. 103
5.2 Conclusion ………………………………………… 107
5.3 Recommendations ………………………………… 108

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES
 1

CHAPTER I

I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS SCOPE

This chapter discusses the problem and its scope and the general overview of
the study. It includes the background of the study, the theoretical framework, the
conceptual framework, and its conceptual and theoretical diagram, the statement of
the problem, the significance of the study, its scope and limitations, and the definition
of terms.

1.1 Background of the Study

Language has the power to bind linguistic symbols and reality as it is “a

system of arbitrary sounds and symbols with meanings “(Fromkin, Rodman, &
Hyams, 2007). Because of this, the language in its particular usage, whether it be for
institutional usage or societal issues, it enables us to "illuminate issues of social
concerns with such profession and such institutions" (Gibbons, 2014). Thus within
the field of law, language plays a vital role because despite how the language of the
law is specifically constructed as Gibbon (2014) argued, it is through language that
evidence are transmitted.

However, this evidence is transmitted in a form of narratives. Swiss (2014)

contends that the law is in fact immersed with narratives especially within the space
of trials where participants share pieces of evidence in a form of narratives. After a
case is finished, a summary of evidence of the crime is put together in a form of a
storyline. According to Kunzel (2003) due to the traumatic experiences of the victims,
specifically rape victims, they may testify in an affective, non-linear dissociative
mode. Given this, knowing how the violence experienced by the victims portrayed in
a legal text is significantly important most especially that " law perpetually attempts
 2

to hide its storytelling qualities in the interest of preserving its autonomy from other
disciplines…" (Brook, 2008).

Brook (2003) furthermore claims that uncovering the narrative qualities of

legal texts and judgments, including their sequencing and causal presentation of
events … is vital in understanding how law operates, under what premises and what
contingencies”. Thus the theory of narratology is now largely used in analyzing
“narrations” in legal discourse. Furthermore, as literature and law have much in
common in terms of attempting to shape reality through language, methods both
narratology and stylistics are essential arsenal in criticism of legal discourse
(Henderson, 2015 ) Thus, incorporating both narratology and stylistic allows the
researchers in analyzing the construction of narratives in legal discourse specifically
in portraying Violence in rape narratives under legal text.

Narrative Stylistics is a stylistic study of the elements of narrative (Ufot,

2014). Narrative and stylistics are both independent fields however both have much
in common. To prove this Fowler (2004) believes that the study of stylistics and
narratology "style" and "structure" is a complementary relationship which is akin to
the relationship "content" (plot) and "form" (expression). According to Dan (2004)
Narratology and stylistics are both used in terms of deepening the understanding of
novel structure, the operation of law and aesthetics.

Studying the construction of rape narratives in the legal text is important.

Since legal discourse claims to portray the reality based on the evidence given in the
legal procedure, the narratives allow individuals to look upon the experience of the
victim. This study allows us to analyze the linguistic style in employed within the
narratives. Through identifying these styles, it will pave the way towards
understanding the portrayal of violence in a within the legal discourse. In this study, it
 3

will give the researchers an opportunity to apply the literary field in non-fiction text
and in legal discourse.

1.2 Theoretical Framework

In this study, the researchers used the presupposition of Narrative Stylistic as

a theory and a method of analysis. Compare to other forms of theories and
methodology, there is not yet an absolute definition of what constitutes Narrative
Stylistics. Nonetheless, According to Burke (2014), the term narrative stylistics is
coined to express the "carrying out a parallel investigation of stylistic techniques and
narratological techniques and see how they interact with each other". Meanwhile, in
the same year, Ufot (2014) used Narrative Stylistics as both a theory and a method
and define it as a "stylistic study of the elements of narrative Discourse"

Stylistics claims that the linguistic features of the text, such that of the
‘grammatical structure' of its sentences, can contribute to the overall meaning of the
text. Hence, Stylistics as a practice is drawn in identifying the overall meaning of the
text being analyzed. Despite this, Fish (1980) argues that there is an existing gap
between the linguistic features that are identified within the text and the interpretation
of this text.

Given this existing gap, employing stylistic in this study may be insufficient
to some extent. Therefore, Narratology has to be drawn as well in order to achieve a
more legitimate "representation" of the text being analyzed. Barry (2002) define
Narratology as "the study of how narratives make meaning " and the procedures and
mechanisms of the act of telling a story. More specifically, it is a theory that attempts
analyze the nature of the "narrative" itself as a "concept and as a cultural practice".
The premise that Narratology was hinged upon was the structuralist theory which
claims that "things cannot be understood in isolation – they have to be seen in the
 4

context of the large structures they are part of" (Barry, 2002). Ergo, the author's
preconceived notion about a particular issue is not explicitly present which leads then
to the application of narratological analysis in order to look deeper into the texts for a
content-based analysis. In addition, Narratology does not only focus on the plot of the
story or where the narrative centers, but, in a nutshell, it examines the entire
"packaging" of the narrative including the style, pace, and viewpoints.

Currently, there are spaces where both Narratology and Stylistics coincides.
Simpson (2014) identified a few of these minimal spaces which are the textual
structure, points of view, and intertextuality which are all under the field of linguistics.
Applying Narrative Stylistic will still retain a distinctive stylistic identity while
drawing on narratology. Consequently, the same case will be used in this research
which is similar with any researchers that used Narrative Stylistics. However,
understanding the nature of the language through the method is valid since according
to Phelan & Rabinowitz ( 2005) in cases of stylistics drawing on narratology,
narratological models or concepts are used as ‘frameworks ‘ for investigating the
‘functioning of language' in a certain context.

To be able to extract the underlying preconceptions of the judges, Couch

(2005) contends that studying the judge's manner of ‘telling a story' would lead to the
preconceptions of the judges because this interpretation of what comprises an entire
case, which includes all the facts on the ground, is imprinted in the text the judges
write.
 5

Figure 1.1 Schematic Diagram of the Theoretical Framework

1.3 Conceptual Framework

The study primarily deals with the Supreme Court Justices' Decision text on rape
cases in the Philippines. More specifically, the primary focus of analysis is the
narratives structures of rape narratives and how these narratives represent violence.
To be able to operationalize the theoretical framework, Simpson (2014) suggestion on
Narratology and the Stylistic intersection with textual structure will be employed. In
order to derive the overall meaning of the text and identify how violence is treated
and represented, the research will examine the stylistic features of language namely
lexicalization, grammatical features, and the context and cohesion.
 6

Lexicalization categories constitute the words (noun, adjective, verbs) selected and
used by the supreme court justice to give a description of a particular subject
including but not limited to the violence within a particular case.

Grammatical categories supply the study as to how the arrangement of words would
affect the description of a particular narrative. In addition, this will help in
determining the emphasis that the judges focused on.

Context and Cohesion of the text will determine the operationalization and the
functionality of the language within the text. More so, this will help the study in an
overall perspective of the representation of violence in the context of the Supreme
Court Justices language.

Using the concepts of Narratology that are close to the field of linguistic as suggested
by Burke (2014) will be used as a tool for identifying the extent to which the
language used perpetuates violence. The two concepts of Narratology that will come
into play are Focalization and Voice

Focalization will be utilized in identifying from which perspective the narrative is

told. In addition, this would help in determining who the main focalizer of the
narratives is.

Voice will help in determining who the voice in the narrative is or who is the
speaking in the discourse. More specifically, this would determine how the story is
package and what are the manner and the treatment of the author with the narratives.
 7

Making sense of the interplay of the concepts of stylistic and narratology would lead
to a better understanding of how language is employed in a particular context. This
form of interplay gives a level and more grounded comprehension of how these forms
of narratives may appear to be violent. More specifically, a grounded analysis of the
language of the law would determine the existing preconceptions towards a specific
issue.

Figure 1.2. Schematic Diagram of the Conceptual Framework

1.4 Statement of the Problem

 8

Using narrative stylistic analysis, the study examined how violence is embedded in
rape narratives.

The researchers aimed to answer the following questions:

1. What linguistic features indicate violence?

2. What are the forms of violence revealed in rape narratives?
3. How do narrative structures perpetuate the language violence in law?
4. What are the implications of the embedded representation of violence in the
language of the law to the society?

1.5 Significance of the Study

The encounter between language and violence that underlies the totality of the
problems in the human field can be in many representations, violence could exist in
ways which society thinks they are most safe. Thus, representation is a way of giving
meaning to language. It is how human beings "make sense" of the objects, entities,
experiences they encounter on a daily basis and communicate to other people. In
order to use the language effectively and re-tell individuals different stories, context
and cohesion are significantly needed which allows language to be descriptive.
Herman (2004) Roland Barthes sought to use linguistics as a "pilot science" in their
efforts to develop new techniques of analyzing stories.

In a legal perspective, Taylor and Lang (2004) argued that in order to bring
out the narratives and identify the powers within them, one should invest on the legal
narrative and storytelling and examine legislation and legal text and because it is in a
legal context, the information that is then selected to be relevant in the case is that
which fits with the objectives of the legal system. According to Falmer (1993), the act
of narrative is not simply the recounting of experience; it involves reconstruction of
 9

events, exaggerating points, omitting and removing materials that are in the lens of
the law, unsuitable and irrelevant. Therefore, legal narratives are partial and
incomplete, they are indebted to a certain perspective that reconstructs the narrative
of the victim to a narrative of the law, and its function is not to mirror the real world
but the construct that the world in the law's image. Thus, the researchers find it
essential to analyze stories of rape victims through their legal narratives by
identifying narrative structures and stylistic features that represent violence. In fact,
according to Labov, narratives require the certain essential element of structure in
which when absent, render the ill-informed. There is also an important point in which
Blitzer and Koss (2004) contend that violence may stifle the narrative construction.
Thus violence, portrayed within the narratives may affect its own representation and
meaning.

1.6 Scope and limitation

The study analyzed the representation of violence in the legal narrative of the
Supreme Court of the Philippines, the corpus dealt mainly with rape cases.

The corpus of this study is particularly limited to (1) the narrative of convicted rape
cases, (2) under the jurisdiction of the fifteen (15) current justices namely, Chief
Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio, Presbitero
Velasco, Teresita De Castro, Arturo Brion, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin,
Mariano del Castillo, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Bienvenido Reyes, Estela Perlas-
Bernabe, Marvic Mario Leonen, Francis Jardeleza and Alfredo Caguioa, which
reports the whole rape case incident with the decision of the Supreme Court of the
Philippines, (3) the rape cases are not limited to women being the only possible
victim, it could be another gender so long as the accused is proven guilty by the law.
All of the narrative reports were taken from the online archives of the Supreme Court
 10

of the Philippines. A total of 6 narrative reports were chosen randomly and were
analyzed in this study. The analysis was limited to the textual contents of the rape
narratives.

1.7 Definition

To aid the reading of this study, the following are the terminologies which
will be constantly used. It is, therefore, imperative that these terminologies be defined
as it is, operationally or conceptually to avoid confusion.

Violence. Violence is an act of direct or indirect intended harm against a

person's body or consciousness or property and it can be determined by the normative
and conventional possibilities of the society in which it exists (Embradura and Balgoa,
2015). Violence according to (Fretheim 2004), also refers to that which is
psychologically destructive; any action, verbal or nonverbal, oral or written, physical
or psychical, active or passive, public or private, individual or institutional/societal,
human or divine, in whatever degree of intensity that abuses, violates, injures, or kills,

a. Rape Violence. In general, rape violence, sexual violence, and sexual

harassment refers to any unwanted, unconsented and coerced sexual comment,
attempt, advance, and act directed against a person’s sexuality.

Narrative. A narrative is any report of connected events, which according to

(Simpson 2004) comprises of two clauses which are temporarily ordered, such as that
a change in their order will result in a change in the way we interpret the assumed
chronology of the narrative events.

a. Narrative Discourse. In this study, this refers to the realized text produced
by the Supreme Court in a given interactive context. According to (Simpson,
 11

2004), this discourse provides a way of recapitulating felt experience by

matching up patterns of language to a connected series of events.
b. Narrative Structure. This refers to both the context of the narrative such as
voice and focalization and the structure of the language style such as lexical
choices, grammatical categories, and cohesion. This also refers to the
narrative techniques specifically the lexical devices used by the Supreme
Court Justices in the presentation of cases.

Narratology. Narratology is a theory and a method that aims to investigate the

structure of how the series of connected events is narrated in given interactive context.
(Genette, 1982)

Stylistics. This refers to the critical approach which uses the methods and findings of
the science of linguistics in the analysis of texts (Barry, 2002)

Supreme Court Justices. This refers to the currently appointed fifteen justices
including the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Justice in the Philippines.

Supreme Court Decision or Decision. This mainly refers to the legal text or the
Judicial ruling which is composed of the summary, narrative, trials and decision of a
case.
 12

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

In its aim to analyze the treatment of rape cases in the Supreme Court of the
Philippines through narrative stylistic, this paper relied heavily on studies that deals
with the concept of the language of the law. In this chapter, the researchers
endeavored to establish the gap and to provide studies that will emphasize the
significance of the study.

As a background and as a guide for this study, therefore, the following concepts have
been reviewed, analyzed, and understood.

2.1 Language, Linguistics, Law, Violence

2.1.1 Language and linguistics

It is generally known that the possession of language is one of the distinct attributes
that distinguishes human from animals. Every day human beings can function
productively through expressing their ideas both in verbal, written and even in sign
form of communication. To understand our humanity, one must understand the nature
of language that makes us human (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2011). Hence,
human nature is reflected in the language used in a particular aspect of society. When
a person is knowledgeable about a particular language, that person can be easily
understood by another person who also speaks the same language. According to
Rodman et, al. (2011) using a language means a person has the capacity to produces
sounds that signify certain meanings and has the ability to understand and interpret
the sounds produced by others. Furthermore, Rodman et al. added that knowing a
 13

language means also knowing that certain sequences of sounds signify certain
concepts or meanings.

Linguists in the past had been interested with the historical development of language.
However, According to Barry (2002) not until the 19th century, Ferdinand de
Saussure investigated on the patterns and functions of language in used today, with
emphasis on how meanings are maintained and established and on the functions of
grammatical structures. Barry (2002) summarizes the contribution of Saussure in
three levels. Firstly, the meaning that is attributed to words is purely arbitrary and
conventional. Furthermore, Leitch (2001) contends that:

The atom of language is the sign, which is functionally split into two parts: a
signifier (sound image) and a signified (concept), brought inseparably together like
the two sides of a sheet of paper. The relation between the signifier and the signified
is "arbitrary" not "motivated".

Secondly, Saussure emphasized that the meaning of words are relational

(Barry, 2002). This means that words cannot be defined in isolation from other words.
Hence, the definition of any words depends on accordingly in relation to other
"adjoining" words.

Lastly, Barry (2002) argues that for Saussure, language constitutes our world.
Basically, meaning is always attributed to the ideas conceived in the human mind and
is created and expressed through language.

In studying the language, one must deal properly with the linguistic system
that generally constitutes language. Generally, Hyamset. Al (2011) describes
linguistics systems as composed of the sounds, structures, meanings, words, and the
rules of putting them all together. Grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the
 14

units and rules of the language—rules for combining sounds into words (phonology)
rules of words (morphology) , rules for combining words into phrases and phrases
into sentences (syntax ) as well as the rules for assigning meaning (semantics)
(Rodman, 2011). However, these aspects of the linguistic system can be dealt with
three levels according to Murcia & Freeman (1999). First, on a Substantial level
which is a below the sentence level and deals with morphology. Rodman et al. (2011)
define morphology as the study of internal structure of words, and of the rules by
which words are formed. A morpheme is a linguistic term for the most elemental unit
of a grammatical form (Hymes et al., 2011).

Following the substantial level is a sentential level which focuses on syntax

which primarily deals with the part of grammar that represents a speaker's knowledge
of sentences and their structure. According to Rodman (2011), the rules of syntax
combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences. The rules specify the correct
order of words in a language. For example, in English language, it follows the basic
order of Subject-Verb- Object.

Lastly, Murcia et al (1999) presented the suprasentential level which

sometimes can be overlooked. The suprasential level mainly deals with the Discourse
and the Pragmatics of a certain language. Pragmatics is concerned with our own
understanding of language in a context (Rodman et al., 2011). Hymes et al. presented
two contexts in understanding Pragmatics; (1) linguistic context - the discourse that
precedes the phrase or sentence to be interpreted (2) situational context virtually
everything that is nonlinguistic in the environment of the speaker.

2.1.2 Law and Language

The relationship between language and the law has existed since times
immemorial. One may say that language can exist alone without the law. However, it
 15

is a great falsehood to claim that law can exist without language. Tiersma (2005) even
stated that it is utterly impossible to conceive of law without language. This statement
may particularly refer to both verbal and written language. When it comes to the field
of writing, Tiersma (2005) argued that language, in general, is essential to the law and
perhaps there are no greater needs for legal norms to be articulated in language, but at
the very least these legal norms must be describable through language. In fact, a
language is an essential tool in order for the law to operate. Important legal text such
as Contracts, Wills, Statutes, Decisions etc. are created and transmitted through
language.

According to Hutchinson (2012), it is useful at this point of time to consider the

claims that have already been established regarding the relationship of language and
law. First, it has been said that laws are expressed through language
(Hutchinson,2012). Solan (2001) define ‘laws' as specific legal rules and such rules
are expressed through language. Secondly, the term ‘law' is a general term and is an
abstraction referring to the whole system of rules, conventions, and principles that are
recognized as rules. Third, Gray (1909) claims that language has been coined as the
medium of law. Gray (1909) posits that the origins of law are judicial precedents,
opinions of experts and principles of morality and most of these sources consist of
language. In order to for these sources to function as Law, there is a grave need for
them to be recognized and this recognition requires their expression through language.

Hence, language is the most powerful tool that supplies law its power and its own
functionality.

2.1.3 Law and literature

The law and literature are not a new field. In the Nineteenth century English
lawyers wrote about depictions of the legal system by Shakespeare, Dickens and
 16

other famous writers (Davis, 1838).The law and literature movement has been
prominent in the last fifteen years or so. This movement explores the relationship of
both law and literature with each other. During the 1970s, the subject of law and
literature has been a recognized field of study in some universities in America.
According to Hursh (2013), Law and literature have a significant role in US history
especially during the Post-revolution era because most of the critics explored the field
of law and at the same time wrote exemplary novels during that period. Moreover,
Hursh (2013) contends that there are different various approaches explored by the
Law and Literature Movement; (1) The law in literature explores the representation of
law in the field of literature (2) The law as literature approach focuses on the
interpretation of the legal text. West (2008) expresses the importance of studying the
relationship of Law and Literature by arguing that literature might sometimes have
the force of law in the past, present and perhaps in the future, thus there is a need to
know its literary narrative root. Law, like literature, is textual and law, like all texts,
literary and otherwise, therefore requires interpretation (West, 2008). According to
Witalec (2003), law and literature depend on narrative in terms of telling a story in
both fictional and legal purpose.

The path of the Law and Literature movement is not smooth sailing similar to
other forms of movements. Posner (1968) argued that Law is a subject matter rather
than a technique and that Legal analysis is the application of analytic method applied
particularly in the field of law. Furthermore, Posner (1986) even contends that there
are numerous differences between the works of literature and the enactment of
legislatures or constitutional conventions to allow a beneficial analysis from the field
of literature to legal interpretation. Not only are legislators not artists by talent or
temperament, but they must be concerned with the communication (Posner, 1986).
According to Posner (1986), another difference between literature and law has
something to do with power. Posner (1986) argued that a literary critic, unlike the
 17

judge, is a private individual who does not wield power. Meanwhile, the exercise of
power in our society is constraint through the existing ‘authoritative' texts while
literary text neglects the authoritativeness and can still function in the society without
it. Posner (1986) seemingly disagree that literary criticism is ‘transferable' to the legal
arena except for the reading skills in the close study of the difficult text. However,
Posner (1986) expresses the relevance of style to law. Judicial opinions, like literature,
belong to the branch of communication known as rhetoric, and rhetoric is style
(Posner, 1986). Furthermore, Posner (1986) expressed that to judge a judge opinion in
a ‘scientific' manner is to miss the whole point. Posner (1986) agreed that rhetoric
counts in law and is important to the field because man legal question cannot be
‘resolved' only by logical or empirical demonstration.

The argument that literature has no special relevance for legal studies depend
on the larger claim that literature provides little or no insight into human life in
general (Seaton, 2013). Seaton (2013) agrees with the idea of Romanticism that
literature provides a way of learning about life without having to experience the
certain situation. The situation in the courtroom and the narratives that are
proliferated inside reminds the individual of vicarious experiences which is parallel to
what literature offers to a human being. Furthermore, Seaton (2013) pedals the idea
that Literature is a vehicle for moral reflection and discrimination. Legal studies
greatly involve reflection to human life and the manipulation of rhetoric which is
something that could be found in the literature.

2.2. Legal Narratives

The law is immersed with narratives from different actors and participants.
Narration plays a central role in legal discourse and permits law to be communicated,
adjudicative acts to be justified, and their principles to be explained (Flurdenik, 2010).
 18

The narration has been a big issue in the different aspect of the law. In fact, legal
narratives are moreover the subject of law; in common, civil, and mixed legal systems,
the reconstruction of what happened to whom or to what is central to a given
sequence of events' being adjudged in juristic terms (Olson, 2014). Narration in the
context of law simply denotes the contents of ‘stories' that are usually present in
adversarial or within the inquisitorial trial. According to Brooks (2006), ‘legal
storytelling has the virtue of presenting the lived experience of marginalized groups
or individuals in a way that traditional legal reasoning doesn't. Although, there is a
perception that Law must remain neutral and even Brooks (1996) argued that law
perpetually attempts to hide its storytelling qualities in order to maintain its autonomy
form other discipline. However, Brook (1996) then continued and claims that
uncovering the narrative qualities of legal texts and judgments… is vital in
understanding how law operates, under what premises and what contingencies. Legal
narratives that exist within the court and even in legal papers, used and presented in
the court, would show a correlation towards the nature of law in a certain context.

To support this, Swiss (2014) cited Robert Cover in his essay Nomos and
Narrative, "no set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from narratives that
locate it and gave it meaning". Hence, these narratives whose meanings are
constructed by legal institutions have an association towards these institutions itself.
Swiss (2014) further quoted:

Law's meaning is tied to the narratives that convey it. Since the entire
framework of the law, from the codification of laws to the medium of judicial
opinions and everything in between, commingles with literature and specifically with
narrative, those who study the judicial process should not undervalue the capabilities
of the narrative. According to Weare (2016), the judge is the person who acts the final
storyteller and through the construct of ‘macro-narratives' of the case, through the
 19

choice of lexicon and rhetoric, would reflect and create discourses in certain cases.
Although competing micro-narratives will emerge within the courtroom, the macro-
narrative that emerges from the case is as a result of evaluative judgments made on
the completeness of the stories told (Weare, 2016).

2.3 Violence

One of the most familiar concepts that human beings have is the concept of
violence. In fact, violence, perhaps, falls on the list of the reasons why Law is
founded. There is a constant association of ‘harm', may it be direct and indirect,
within the concept of violence. Moreover, ‘violence' may also associate with the
concept of force. However, Garver (2012) contends that the relationship of ‘force' and
‘violence' may not be linear all the time. According to Garver (2012), there are
instances where ‘force' is employed but it is not necessarily considered as violence.
For example, doctors employ force when it comes to operations but the action is not
considered as violent because of the context of the application of force. Violence in
human affairs is much more closely connected with the idea of a violation than with
the idea of force (Garver, 2012).

Generally, the standard of violence is when a person is violated. Garver (2012)

claims that there are four different kinds of violence based on two criteria; (1) the
violence is personal or institutionalized (2) whether the violence is overt or covert and
quiet. Overt physical assault of one person on the body of another is the most obvious
form of violence (i.e. mugging, rape, and murder) (Garver, 2012). However, when a
person employs force on another person without their consent, according to Garver
 20

(2012) it is considered as an attack not only on the physical entity but it is an attack
on a person – and it is considered to be a personal overt violence. On the other hand,
Garver (2012) argues that the institutionalization of violence happens when a group
of individual inflicts harms on other individuals and acts under a certain agency.
Quiet or covert violence does not directly involve physical assault but it happens
through a subtle manner such as in a form of psychological violence. Garver (2012)
argues that;

If we fail to recognize that a real psychological violence can be

perpetrated on people, a violation of their autonomy, their dignity, their
right to determine things for themselves, to be human rather than dogs,
then we fail to realize the full dimension of what it is to do violence.

Since in the 1980s types of research about violence have sky-rocketed in

various disciplines. Within the transformation of violence research, it started with the
causative subjective origins of violence. According to Staudigl (2013), there was a
concern on the study in violence because the focus is given to physical, direct, visible
violence which prevented the exploration on the subtle forms of violence that silently
pervade and shape human life-worlds. Because of this, it expresses that there is a gap
between researchers on Physical direct violence and the forms of violence that are
more subtle which is what Garver (2012) describes as a covert form of violence.

2.3.1 Violence in the context of Law

Perhaps the field that is far more exposed to a different form of violence is the
field of Law. The law is the final arbiter of what constitute violence since it has to
give the final judgment if violence was committed, what is the extent of the violence
committed, what is the appropriate amount of punishment must be served to achieve
 21

justice. The notion of justice and its pursuit through the mechanism of law is, at least
in contemporary scholarship, fraught (Birell, 2016). Birell (2016) examined the
correlation between law and violence in the context of indigeneity. According to
Birell (2016), the law has been argued that the law is both violent and nonviolent. The
justification behind this is that the law exhibits a violence that is both "determining
force and responsive expectancy" with the aspect of determinate law which "violates"
the alterity of Indigenous subjectivities in the context of colonized nations.

According to Inazau (2014), Law is violent in the context of Legal

interpretation as he cited Robert Cover expressing that "Legal interpretation takes
place on a field of pain and death". According to Robert Cover, as cited by Inazau
(2014), Whenever Interpreters have finished their work, most often than not, they
leave behind the victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social
practices of violence. However, Inazau (2014) contends that this form of violence in
legal interpretations does not make the grand jury's decision any less a moral failure
but the decision given is one of many violent acts within the violent system of law.
Inazau (2014) furthermore quoted the significant need to explore the nature of law:

We will talk in abstract terms of "justice" or "process" or the "rule of law"

without asking the harder questions of the flawed laws that distort those concepts…
we can recognize that the violence of the law doesn't just raise the stakes for law's
practitioners – for lawyers, judges, politicians, and grand juries.. it also raises the
stakes for the rest of us who inhabit the world that it shapes.

Across women's rights groups and movement, there is an expression of

outrage with regards to how the nature of cross-examination on rape cases victimizes
the victim. Despite widespread reforms to legislation and policy complainants still
find cross-examination distressing, demeaning and humiliating (Kaladelfos, Westera,
 22

Zajac, &Zydervelt, 2016). In a survey of 19 rape complainants conducted by Kebbel,

E., & Gilchrist (2011) resulted that victims are generally satisfied with the Criminal
Justice System response, however; concerns are prevalent with the most "damaging"
part of the process which is the cross-examination. According to (Kaladelfos et. al,
2016)because of the toxic nature of the cross-examination victims feel that the cross-
examination process is a repeat of the trauma of being raped. This form of experience
is a phenomenon referred to as ‘secondary victimization' by Williams (1984) as cited
by Kaladelfoset. al, (2016).

In a recent study conducted by (Boux, 2016) victims in sexual assault cases

frequently encounter hostile prosecutor and judges that are hostile in nature that can
undermine fairness in the courtroom. The study investigates the controversial issue
of how the American Judiciary writes about rape issue and sexual assault. According
to (Bohner et. al, 1998), various researchers have suggested that ‘rape myths' may
contribute to the prevalence of rape. Rape myths are stereotypic beliefs about rape
that blame the victim and exonerate the rapist (Bohner et. al, 1998). Rape myths
occurrence in the cross-examination violates the victim in a manner that it justifies
that the act of rape as legitimate. For example, a woman who drinks and goes to the
club every night was raped is said to receive what she deserves. Bohnert. al (1998)
posits that the content of common myths about rape bears various similarity to the
technique of Neutralization presented by Brownmiller (1975). In the current study,
the salient attitudes and beliefs that shape judicial decision making in are those that
relate to gender and sexual assault – and, in particular, a belief in rape myths (Boux,
2016). In addition to rape myths, Coates et al. (19940, as cited by Boux (2016), listed
two forms of rape myths. Firstly, they identified a case where "sexual assault was
often attributed to a sexual rather than violent impetus" (Coates et. al, 1994) as the
"erotic or affectionate characterization of sexual assault" myth. On the second form,
Coates et al. (1994) distinguish the myth that sexual assault is not violence. This myth
 23

is founded on the belief that regardless of how rape is depicted as violent, it falls into
the category of a lesser form of violence.

Boux (2016) focused her study on how the nature of rape and sexual assault is
presented in the judicial decision of 44 courts appellate in the United States. Based on
the result ensued from the dissertation, it showed that rape myths do appear to be a
common and widely used discourse in sexual assault cases..

2.3.2 Rape in the Philippines

Rape has been a discussed topic in many forms of society, however,

researches and documentation about rape have lagged behind. In the United States,
there has been an offshoot of studies that attempts to examine the probable ‘violence'
or unfair treatment within the rape inside the courtroom. On the other hand, in the
case of the Philippines, there hasn't been any development of researches that attempts
to examine how rape cases are being treated inside the courtroom.

Nonetheless, there are researches in the past that examine how rape is being
treated. According to Ajdukovich( 1980), a major qualification of the role of the
criminal justice system in the Philippines is the fact that access and recourse to the
legal system are subdued to class and cultural-based social stratification. Furthermore,
Ajdukovich (1980) claims that the high incidence of rape in the Philippines is parallel
with the relatively high status historically enjoyed by women in the Philippine
Society. The treatment of rape has been influenced by both Spanish and American
patriarchal views. Women in the Philippines are expected to abstain in sexual contact
outside marriage which is a blatant form of double standards to any Filipina. Another
form of blatant covert violence was a statement of a policewoman as cited by
Ajdukuvich (1980): "A very short dress may entice a person – the man may read it as
an invitation from the woman saying she wants sex".
 24

Another fundamental issue in treating rape cases in the Philippines is the issue
of consent. Consent is not prescribed as an element of rape in the Philippine Penal
Codes. However, the expectation that the victim proves non-collusion in the allegedly
sexual act is incorporated into the requirement that the victim resists "tenaciously"
(Ajdukovich, 1980). Ergo, victims who failed to aggressively resist from the act of
‘rape' is hardly considered as a ‘rape'. Such act was determined through the case of
People v. Castro as cited by Ajdukovich (1980): Where complainant did not offer any
resistance or vocal protestation against the alleged assault, such circumstance does
not support the conviction for rape.

Another study that centers on the subject of rape in the Philippines is the study
conducted by (Candaliza&Zarco, 1995) which attempts to provide answers that
transcend in common speculation and conjecture on rape cases in Metro Manila. The
findings show that victims and offenders were of the same socioeconomic status in 49%
of total cases. Moreover, thereis a total of 140 reports out of 179 cases was reported
to use a mode of intimidation or use of the weapon to inflict fears to the victims.

The studies and researches that center on rape cases in the Philippines are
limited. Moreover, these studies' scope is only limited to socio-economical and
cultural perspectives. When it comes to the field of language, there is a wide gap that
has the necessity to be filled.

2.4 Narrative Stylistics

Narrative stylistics is theoretical study of narratives paying particular attention

to its context and language styles. It can both function as a theory and as a
methodology for studying narratives of people and of various institutions. It is
derived from the concept of narratology and stylistics. Fowler (1991), believes that
 25

the study of stylistics and narratology, style of structure is a complementary

relationship.

2.4.1 Narratology

Narratology has begun to take shape in 1966, it was first defined by Tzvetan
Todorov (1969), as the theory of the structures of narrative. Narratology as a
standalone method and theory can be used to study narratives to reveal the structure
of a certain narrative, told felt experience, or any series of event. It is used to
investigate a structure or present a structural and detailed description of a narrative
context broken into component parts and determined the functions and the
relationship of the structure within the manifestations of narratives in language and in
different media. Narratology is also defined by Bruners (1991), as an account of
events in narrative forms. Narrative forms as asserted by Nash (1994) are forms that;

“..are found not only in the context of literature but also in the
recollection of life events, in historical documents and textbooks, in
scientific explanations of date, in political speeches and in a day to day
conversation.”

In a more general perspective, all of the theories about narrative is associated

with what it is narrated and how it is narrated. Moreover, narratology offers a unique
vantage point from which traditionally excluded voices or stories, as Christopher
Rideout (1998) suggests that, ‘a fundamental inquiry underlying the study of
narratology is whether narrative structures are merely forms of language that are
congruent with reality’. For Simpson (2004), a narrative in its most minimal form
comprises of two clauses which are temporarily ordered such that a change in their
 26

order will result in a change in the way we interpret the assumed chronology of the
narrative events.

Narrative instance is defined as the conjunction between (1) narrative voice

(who is speaking), (2) time of narration (when does the telling occur, relative to the
story) (3) narrative perspective (through whom are we perceiving), as with the
narrative mood it is the act of examining the narrative instance.

Narrative Voice. It is defined as the narrator that lets signs of his presence appear in
the narrative he is recounting and a particular stance in the context is assumed by
him/her.

Focalization. Focalization otherwise known as narrative perspective is treated in the

study as the restriction field, a selection of narrative information with respect to what
was traditionally called omniscience. In the study there are three kinds of focalization;

II. Zero Focalization. The narrator knows more than the characters, as
well as their thoughts and gestures.
III. Internal Focalization. The narrator knows as much as the focal
character. Cannot report the thoughts of other characters.
IV. External Focalization. The narrator knows less than the characters,
acts a bit like a camera lens, following the actions and gestures from the
outside to guess their thoughts.

There are two phases by which narratology had undergone through its development;

Classical Phase.

During the early years of narratology, researchers were interested and focused
only on identifying and defining narrative universals such as the universal narrative
 27

grammar or syntax, which according to Meister (2009), ‘ a deep structure of narrative

generating all possible surface utterances of individual texts.' In this phase,
narratology was confined into a set of general statements on narrative genres, on the
systematic of narrating (telling a story), and on the structure of plot (Alphen et.al,
1993)

Post-Classical Phase.

David Herman (1999) first coined the term Post-classical narratology with the
aim of describing the contrast between the structuralist narratology. Post-classical
narratologist is interdisciplinary in nature, displaying an interest in and functions of a
wide range of narratives and in the dialogic negotiation of meanings, and focusing on
issues such as context, culture, gender, history, interpretation, and the reading process
– those aspects of narrative marginalized by structural narratology. It is no longer
used in the singular sense but instead on the plural form of narratologies, where
combinations with other domains of knowledge happened. It is the time that
narratologist foregoes studying narrative universals, and started focusing on the
specifics such as historicity and contextuality modes of narrative representations as
well as to its pragmatic functions across various media outlet.

2.4.2 Stylistics

Stylistics, according to Paul Simpson, ‘is a method of textual interpretation in

which primacy of place is assigned to language' (2004, p.2). Its purpose as a method
is to apply the analysis of the textual data in terms of morphology, phonology, lexis,
syntax and semantics and even in the pragmatics level. It aims to account for how
texts projects meaning, how readers construct meaning and why readers respond to
texts in the way that they do. Matthews (2007) posits that it is the study of style in
language. Leech and short (2007), asserts that literary stylistics has implicitly or
 28

explicitly the goal of explaining the relation between language and artistic function.
Leech and Short (1981), defined style as;

“… the way in which language is used in a given context, by a

person, for a given purpose and so on. To clarify this, we may adopt
the Swiss linguist Saussure's distinction between langue and parole,
langue the code or system of rules common to the speakers or
writers of a language and parole being the particular uses of the
system, or selection of this system, that speakers or writers make on
this or that occasion. One may say, for example, that certain English
expressions belong to the official style of weather forecasting while
other expressions belong to the style of everyday conversational
remarks about the weather. Style, then, pertains to parole: it is the
selection from a total linguistic repertoire that constitutes a style."

Stylistics pay attention among other things, to intersentential relations such as

cohesions, semantic feature, and sequences of conversational contributions across
pairs of individual speaking turn. Stylistics looks at what is going on within the
language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals. The
style differences or linguistic codes happen because of the choices made by the
language users' context or a particular situation, nature of participants and their
relationship with each other.

Levels of stylistic analysis

The following are the level of stylistics. We analyze the text according to these levels
based on Simpson’s approach:
 29

5. Phonetic level. It is an examination of sounds; we study the characteristics

and potential utility of sounds in phonetic level.
6. Phonological level. It is the study of the sound system of a given language;
the formal rules of pronunciation.
7. Graphological level. It is the analogous study of a language’s writing system;
the formalized rules of spellings.
8. Grammatical level. In this level, both the syntactic and morphological levels
are discussed. The aim is to analyze the internal structure of sentences in a
language and the way they function in sequence. Clauses, phrases, words,
nouns, verbs, etc. need to be distinguished and put through an analysis to find
out the foregrounding and the deviation.
9. Lexical level. It is the study of the way in which individual words and idioms
tend to pattern in different linguistic context; on the semantic level in terms of
stylistics.

The reason why language is so important to stylistic is because the various

forms, pattern, and levels that constitute linguistic structure are an important index of
the function of the text. Stylistic can help bring out meanings which are inaccessible
to syntax or formal semantics, which largely focus on individual sentences. The style
is thus a kind of meaning, holding of a text only as the content of a thought about the
text. It is an approach to the analysis of (literary) texts using linguistic description
(Short, 1996). It can also be defined as the study and interpretation of texts in regards
to their linguistic and tonal style (Wikipedia). (Short, 1996) claims that stylistics deals
with methods of relating linguistic facts (linguistic description) to meaning
(interpretation) in the as explicitly way as possible

Related Studies and Research Gap

 30

There are notable studies that used the narratology both as a method and as the
theory in various fields of knowledge. Narratology as a method was first used in
analysing literary genres such as poems, novels, short stories, etc., when Roland
Barthes (1982) first posits,' narratology as a theoretical approach to studying how
literature imparts meaning', from then various studies in literature employed
narratology to analyze structures of any literary genre.

There are a lot of studies that uses the narrative methodology, one of which is
the study that includes, analysis of how narrative constructs identity (Czarniawska,
1997), how narrative can aid education (Abma 2000), how stories contribute to sense-
making (Gabriel 1998) and how narrative may act as a source of understanding
(Cortazzi 2001). Various combinations of narratology with other domains of
knowledge, such as literature, semiotics, translation studies, etc have been explored
by researchers.

Many studies as that of Ahmadian et.al (2014), McIntyre (2012), and Aslam
et.al (2012) used narratology and stylistics separately as means to analyze and
understand embedded meanings of the different poems. Ahmadian et.al (2014), for
instance, analyzed William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, by which Scheffel (2013),
asserts that the short story's concept of time is not observable but it became manifest
and thus perceivable through the various changes.' In order to discern how time
became a tool in the various changes in the story, the paper focused on identifying
and elaborating the role of time in the short story. The researcher used Genette's
narratological framework of time that relies on two concepts; (1) discourse time;
which is defined by (Chatman, 1978), as the time it takes to pursue the discourse, and
the (2) story time which according to (Scheffel, 2013),' is the story time that emerges
from the interplay of space, events, characters and plot structure,' was used to reveal
the time manipulations that happened within the short story. In the study, narratology
 31

is defined as ‘the study of narratives that includes elements such as mood, voice,
narration, and time (Genette, 1980). In the paper, the concept of time is classified into
categories of order, duration, and frequency and because the short story, A rose for
Emily does not rely on a conventional linear approach to present his characters inner
lives and motivations, William Faulkner instead used fractures, shifts, and
manipulations of time, stretching the story out over several decades to reveal Emily's
life and her family. As a result of the narratological analysis of time manipulation,
according to the paper, there is an understanding and grasping of the time of a story
that led to a deeper and better understanding of the contents which includes the events
and plot of the story. Another analysis by McIntyre (2012) with use of one of E.E
Cumming's poems, McIntyre (2012) employed stylistics as a tool to identify (1)
lexical features; by listing all open class words (e.g nouns, verbs, adjectives or
adverbs) in the poem which carry the majority meaning in a language, as opposed to
closed class (grammatical words such as determiners), (2) the analysis is the deviation
and parallelism, which identifies parts of the poem that break the normal convention
of poems such as the use of lower case letters for words that normally expected to be
in capitals and also the use of punctuation marks where it would not normally be
necessary and lastly instances where repetition of particular sounds although
regularity of rhyme scheme is not necessary for the poem. in the study used stylistics
to uphold an interpretation of a poem and how it can highlight elements of a poem
that we might otherwise miss. It also enables us to speculate with more certainty on
why E.E Cummings chooses to use such seemingly odd stylistics techniques in the
poem. An example of the findings is the use of deviant punctuation that is linked to
the foregrounding of dynamic verbs, explaining why we perceive so much movement
in the poem. Stylistically analyzing the poem highlights how the most internally
deviant features of the poem are those which we would usually consider to be normal,
the non-deviant language in both everyday communication and within poetry and
 32

suggests a reason as to why this might be. Aslam et.al (2013) also used stylistics in
her analysis of Robert Frost's Bereft, in this study she aimed to analyze Robert Frost's
poem from the perspective of stylistic analysis, made under the aspects of 1.
Graphological; it is through examining the division of stanzas, capitalizations and the
use of punctuation in the poem, 2. Lexical; through listing and categorizing the words
used in the poem (e.g nouns, verb, adverb, adjective, etc.), 3. Grammatical; this
analysis make use of the punctuation marks such as question mark, and how it shows
that the poet has conflict in his mind, and even the use of full stops in the poem, who
it shows the various angles emphasized in the poem, 4. Syntactical; this focuses on
the figures of speech used to create a particular style of writing such as tropes,
metaphor, imagery, etc., and 5. Phonological; this part of the analysis identifies the
rhyme scheme used in the poem. This research analyzed the structure and schemes
that are present in the poem though its themes, views, and treatment of nature.
Another group of studies by Bosseaux (2004), O'Sullivan (2006), Schiavi (1996), Van
Leuven Zwart (1989), Levenston et.al (1986) and Kruger (2014) focused on the use
of narratological context in translated text in literature. The approach of these studies
attempted to analyze translation shifts in terms of narratological concepts but without
attempting to correlate these shifts to the intratextual presence of the translator.
Kruger (2014), presents the preliminary and exploratory investigation of an
alternative narratologist framework that includes the reader as a constitutive
component. She uses the idea of the shifts that take place in translation and their
effects on the macro textual level, to argue for the acknowledgment of the existence
of the translator's voice in the translation, a voice which is in part standing in for the
author's and in part autonomous. The framework used in the analysis is based on the
ideas of Bortolussi and Dixon (2003) of the two-part interlocked conception of
narratological elements; textual features and reader constructions.
 33

Narratology's contribution to research grew more than expected in a small

span of time researchers attempted to combine it with a broader domain which is
semiotics. The combination of narratology and semiotics has been employed in Lucie
Guillemette and Cynthia Levesque' study of narratology. Lucie Guillemette asserts
that ‘in order to understand narratology's contribution to semiotics, it is important to
grasp the distinction between its three fundamental entities; story, narrative and the
narration.' The story corresponds to a series of events that are told by someone (the
narrator) and represented in some final form, producing a narrative. In this paper,
narratology looks at the internal mechanisms of narrative, the form taken by a
narrated story. It was used to identify common universal principles of text and to
discern the relations possible between the elements of the narrative, story and
narration triad. A combination of narratology and post-colonial criticism was also
studied by Divya Diwved, Henrik Skov Nielsen and Richard Walsh in their analysis
of narratology and ideology. In this study, there was an attempt to bring the methods
and theories of narratology to bear on ideological dimensions of literature while
simultaneously elaborating them and demonstrating their usefulness. The analysis for
narrative voice and how it is generated, the type of narration and how it is constructed,
how the narrative situation affects the meanings and themes of the novel are the main
focus of the paper. Some of the studied concepts in this paper are the concept of
authorship, narrative coherence, grammar, and plot.

In the 1960s, ‘psychology became open to the investigation of cognitive

processes and human experience. Attention to experience is part of the rekindled
interest in narrative, which has occurred since the more to cognitive psychology, and
views narrative as reflecting a cognitive structure' (Polkinghorne 1988). According to
Polkinghorne (1998), it is through the use of psychoanalysis that deals with clients,
 34

when therapists listen to individuals' narrations of their lives and transform these
narrations into alternative narratives that are more adaptive, more functional.

The last strand of studies involves the study of the law with the narratology
and stylistics used separately in the analysis of the general characteristics of the
language of the law. Notable studies under this strand are the works of Swiss (2014)
and Damova (2007). The law is inherently literary (Swiss, 2014). An important
concept to remember in applying narratology to law is that narrative is finite, all
things within narrative, even if they seem trivial are considered significant to the
whole, because according to Peter Brooks, ‘law reinforces the notion that the
structuring of events within a finite space in which we tell a story, all details
introduced in that story are integral to the narrative Narratology as a field of study
analyzes the structure of narratives, it understands narratives as inherently comprised
of a finite set of linguistics formulations. Peter Brooks, argued that narratology is not
only applicable but also crucial to the study of law. Though the law may idealize
itself as insular and may strive for complete autonomy from other disciplines, we
should not forget that as long as human actors (whose thoughts and expectations are
shaped by narratives) continue to involve themselves in the process of justice,
complete isolation will remain a goal that the law will never be able to fully attain.
We cannot ignore narratives or narratology even If we wish to banish both from the
realm. The narrative is of fundamental importance to understanding the law.
Narrative recognized that narrative exist beyond individual descriptions of characters,
beyond the intention of the author, and beyond particular stories themselves.

In Kathrin Swiss' study in 2014, she considered the ways in which the rape
shield laws shape the narrative space, and thus the narrative capacity of rape victims.
In this study, rape shield laws were defined as protections of rape victims from
having her testimony scrutinized and her credibility as a witness called into questions
 35

based on her past sexual history, its main purpose is to repel the historically
entrenched societal belief that female chastity correlated with female veracity.
According to Swiss in 2014, it is high time for these kinds of laws to be abandoned
and adopt a separate framework altogether because according to her, rape shield laws
plays a vital role in the society's stereotyping of rape into a single story- a story that
reifies racist and sexist mythology and ignores the much more pervasive narrative of
acquaintance rape. Therefore, this paper analyzed how rape shield reinforces
stereotypical characterizations of women and confine women to certain narratives
through examining what narratology is and how it can be a useful lens to analyze the
law. Damova (2007), asserts that, ‘study of legal language has been affected by new
theories introduced into linguistics, in particular, the sociolinguistics approaches and
the movement for simplifications of legal discourse' and that there is a very tight
connection between what is said, how it is said and why, and the situation in which
the speech is uttered. The aims of her paper are to provide some basics in terms of
some essential linguistic elements, stylistic background and the description of the
legal register, history of legal English and linguistic/stylistic description of binomials.
The theoretical part of this thesis provided some important elements concerning the
domain of law in terms of linguistics, stylistics and historical backgrounds. She used
lexical, syntactical, discourse level features in analyzing recurring binomial
expressions in the language of the law.

Ufot (2014) study entitled Narrative Stylistics: A Study of the Narrative and
Discourse Strategies in Omoto's Just Before Dawn, This paper is a stylistics study of
elements of narrative discourse in Kole Omotoso's Just before dawn, including its
narrative plot, narrative discourse and chapter titles. The study, therefore, focuses on
the stylistic and semantic implications of the major features of the writer's narrative
strategy such as flashbacks, time shift, foreshadowing, and elaboration and chapter
titles. This paper reveals the ways in which the author manipulates narrative sequence
 36

and the various stylistic elements of narrative discourse and deploys them
symbolically.

There are numerous existing studies in both separate methodology of

narratology and stylistics in various bodies of knowledge such as literature, linguistics,
semiotics, translations and even in law, however the researchers’ think that there is
gap in terms of the combination of stylistics and narratological landscape, given that
most often than not studies combining narratology and stylistics are only employed in
the analysis of literary genres. Most importantly, very little is known in terms of how
the language of law in the Supreme Court of the Philippines treats rape cases
considering the context and prevalence of these kinds of cases.

CONTEXT: Supreme Court of the Philippines and the Language of Law

The Supreme Court of the Philippines is the highest court in the Philippines. It is
presided over by a Chief Justice and is composed of fifteen (15) Justices. It was
formerly part of the University of the Philippines Manila Campus and occupies the
corner of Padre Faura Street and Taft Avenue in Manila.

The functions and powers of the Supreme Court as the highest court in the
country are defined in 1987 Constitution Article, is divided into two – (1) Judicial
functions, which is vested in “one Supreme Court and in such lower courts as may be
established by law and is also exercised through the judiciary’s primary role of
adjudication that includes the “duty of the courts of justice to settle actual
controversies, and to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of
discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or
instrumentality of the government”, and (2) administrative functions, the functions of
the Court pertaining to the supervision and control over the Philippine judiciary and
its employees (Wikipedia).
 37

The Court is further authorized to promulgate the rules for admission to the
practice of law, for legal assistance to the underprivileged, and the procedural rules to
be observed in all courts.

The language of the law is mainly focused on an institution of rules and

objectives that may necessarily manipulate and/or negotiate language in order to
abide by the said legal system. According to Peter Goodrich (1987), the law can
exclude, stigmatize and define out alternative voices that are not necessarily in line
with the legal system. Falmer (1993), asserts that ‘legal narratives are not simply the
recounting of the experience of the people involved, it involves reconstruction of
events, exaggerating points, omitting and removing materials that are, in the lens of
law, unsuitable and irrelevant.

Given this context, this study focuses on the investigation of the treatment of
rape cases which involve the fifteen (15) current justices, accused and the accuser in
the selected rape cases and the rape narratives constructed by the Supreme Court of
the Philippines.
 38

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

3.0 METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the methodology of the study. It includes the research design,
time frame, corpus of the study and data analysis.

3.1 Research Design

This study employs a qualitative research design in describing the narrative structure
used in the rape cases released by the Supreme Court of the Philippines under the
jurisdiction of the 15 current justices. The goal of the study is to explore the context
and the style of the structures used in the rape narratives to be able to see how rape
cases are being treated in the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

3.2 Corpus of the Study

The corpus of this study was composed of the rape narratives found in the Supreme
court Decision collected from the online in the collection of data was threefold: (1)
the rape cases should be convicted cases; (2) the 6 random rape cases have been ruled
under the jurisdiction of the 15 current justices and; (3) the rape crime is not limited
to women as victims of rape.
Furthermore, all the rape cases that are not under the jurisdiction of the 15 current
justices are excluded from this study.
The researchers' chose to study and analyze the context and style of rape narratives
because the researchers' aims to unravel the treatment of rape cases in the Supreme
Court and investigate whether secondary victimization, as defined by Rebecca
Campbell (1999), ‘an indirect result of assault which occurs through the responses
 39

and treatment of individuals and institutions that retraumatize the abused', happens in
the legal narratives of these kinds of rape cases. In addition, these judicial Decisions
"constitute a primary source of case law [as they] provide a judge's rationale for the
decision, the facts of legal case, and dispositions" (Crocker, 2015). Secondly, "since
judges are the ultimate and most powerful interpreters of the trial talk, their rulings,"
(Ehrlich, 2007) powerfully shape precedents. The narrative discourse within this text
is what constitutes how law functions through language.

3.3 Data Analysis

This research will employ Narrative Stylistic as theoretical foundation and as a

method for analyzing data. There are several challenges that have been encountered
as to how narratology and stylistics will be utilized together as a method of analysis
for narrative discourse. Nonetheless, Simpson (2004) suggested six basic stylistic
units of analysis in narrative description two of which are the Textual Structure –
which refers to the arrangement and organization of individual narrative units, and
Point of view of the narrative. Hence, the narrative structures will be analyzed
through the stylistic features namely, lexicalization, grammatical features, and context
and cohesion and identified the representation of violence in the language of the law.
The analysis of these stylistic features then will be utilized in analyzing the discourse
narrative through the two concepts of Narratology, as identified to be close to
linguistics according to Phelan & Rabinowitz (2005), namely Voice and Focalization.
These two concepts of Narratology will be employed to analyze the extent to which
violence is perpetuated based on the stylistic features that will be identified as violent.
The analysis will explore in drawing on the implications of embedded representation
of violence in the language of the law to the society in general.
 40

CHAPTER IV

PRESENTATION OF DATA AND ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the Stylistic and Narratology Analysis of the representations
of possible forms of violence reflected in the six convicted rape cases from the
online archive of the Supreme Court. A summary of the Court Decision is also
provided with the G.R. No and promulgated date of each case before the actual
analysis. There are three features of stylistics that are analyzed; lexicalizations,
grammatical categories and context, and cohesion.

4.1.1 G.R No. 186469

Promulgated: June 13, 2012
Summary of Court Decision

Perlas-Bernabe, J:

This resolves the appeal from the August 19, 2008, Decision of the Court of
Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R-H.C No. 02781 filed by the appellant Jover Matias y
Dela Fuente which affirmed his conviction for the crime of rape under Sec. 5 (b),
Article III of Republic Act (RA) No. 7610.

4.1.2 G.R. No. 188851

Promulgated Date: October 19, 2011

Summary of Court Decision

Peralta, J:
 41

On appeal is the Court of Appeals Decision dated April 16, 2009, in CA-G.R.
CR-H.C No 02989 affirming with modification the Regional Trial Court
Decision dated July 31, 2006, in Criminal Case Nos. 1381 and 1382 for
Statutory rape under Article 335 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) as amended
by Republic Act No. 8353 and Criminal Case Nos. 1387 and 1388 for rape.

4.1.3 G.R. No. 177747

Promulgated Date: February 16, 2010

Summary of Court Decision

Brion, J.

We resolve in this Decision, the appeal from the November 8, 2006, decision of
the Court of Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R CR-HC No. 00905. The CA affirmed
January 12, 2004, the decision of the Regional Court (RTC), Branch 222, Quezon
City, finding Ignacio Poras, (appellant) guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the
crime of rape and sentencing him to reclusion perpetua.

4.1.4 G.R. No. 187734

Promulgated Date: August 29, 2012

Summary of Court Decision

Leonardo-de Castro, J.:

This is an appeal from the Decision of the Court of Appeals in CA G.R. CR.-H.C.
No. 02917 dated December 19, 2008, affirming the conviction of accused-
appellant for statutory rape in Criminal Case No. 4467 and modifying his
conviction in Criminal Case No. 4468 from statutory rape to qualified rape.
 42

4.1.5 GR. No. 187744

Promulgated date: June 20, 2012

Summary of Court Decision

Leonardo-De Castro, J.

On appeal is the Decision dated November 28, 2008, of the Court of Appeals in
CA-G.R. CR.-HC. No. 02905 which affirmed with modifications the Decision
dated June 22. 2007 of the Regional Trial Court of Bangued, Abra, Branch 1…
The RTC found accused-appellant Roger Tejero guilty beyond reasonable doubt
of three counts of rape.

4.1.6 GR. No. 181491

Promulgated date: July 30, 2012

Summary of Court Decision

Bersamin, J.

Henry Arcillas had been convicted of qualified rape by the Regional Trial Court in
Masbate City and meted the death penalty, which the law in force at the time
prescribed. The Court of Appeals (CA) affirmed the finding of guilt but found him
guilty only of simple rape due to his common-law relationship with the victim’s
mother not having been properly alleged in the information and accordingly
imposed reclusion perpetua.

4.2.1 Lexical Categories

4.2.1a Nouns
 43

A noun is a part of speech which indicates the names of person, animal, place,
idea, action, or even quality of a thing. In this case analysis, the function of a noun
is not limited to the definition provided, but it is also used to intensify the function
of the noun as well as in terms of word choice and to how these word choices
affect the characterization of the entirety of each rape case. In this analysis, nouns
are used to embed meanings within sentences.

(a) “In convicting appellant, the RTC gave full credence to AAA’s
testimony, which was straightforward and positive. On the other hand, it
found appellants defenses of denial and alibi weak, taking into
consideration that his aunt’s house where he was allegedly doing
construction [...]” 1

Sentence (a) is an excerpt from page 2 of case G.R 186469, which can be
considered as the most apparent manifestation of violence in the case. We notice
in the sentence the use of the nouns; denial and alibi to actually modify the
defenses of the appellant in the case. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary,
the noun denial refers to a statement saying that something is not true while alibi
is the claim that you cannot be guilty of a crime because you were somewhere else
in the commission of the crime, but in this case denial and alibi cannot be viewed
as solitary terms because they are used to characterize what kind of defenses the
appellant has, which in this case suggest that, parts if not the entire narrative
defense of the appellant is actually not true and that they are all but excuses, it is
the another way of saying that the defenses are unreal and skewed but more
importantly it asserts that the appellant refuses to admit the truth or reality in the
court.

1
G.R. 186469, People v. Dela Fuente
 44

On the other hand, while nouns can be used to embed meanings in sentences, it
can also be utilized to actually describe relationships and labels between
individuals and along with it, is the responsibility the label brings. This is
apparent in the sentence (b) and (c), by which the use of term father in relation to
AAA and BBB, establishes familial kinship between them, therefore there is an
automatic imposition of the role of the father to his child that he has to fulfill and
that alone.

(b) “AAA was raped by her father, the appellant.” 2

(c) “BBB was raped twice by her father, the appellant. 3

The same is true in the sentence (d), the abstract noun ignominy, which is how
the accuser's situation in the rape incident is being described. Ignominy,
according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, refers to the deep personal
humiliation and disgrace of an individual due to an event, therefore the term
ignominy is suggestive of the degree and extent of shame that AAA and BBB
experienced in their reality of revealing that they are raped. Therefore, implying
that AAA and BBB reporting the incident to the police is a sacrifice. Although
violence is not very evident in the use of term, it is still present in the way the
term draws more attention because it can be considered anyhow as a jargon of
some sort, if we try to look at it there are other more familiar terms of the same
meaning and extent but are not utilized instead the ignominy.

(d) “... victims of narrowing experiences (AAA and BBB)

would rather bear their ignominy and pain in private parts
rather than reveal their shame to the world.” 4

Moreover, the use of another abstract noun, sex

2
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v
3
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v
4
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
 45

(e) “According to the appellate court, the victim’s

testimony proved that the appellate had sex with her while
she was unconscious.” 5

Sex, as defined by Oxford Dictionary is the physical activity in which people

touch each other's bodies, - but in this case, it seem as though the use of the
abstract noun sex is suggestive of the idea that anyhow, the plaintiff perhaps
allowed it to happen or at very least participated in the physical activity. The
abstract noun sex cannot be equated with rape because they are very different
from each other.

In addition to that, is the use of jargon in between narratives.

(f) “She claimed that she was first raped by the accused on
Sunday, February 1, 2004, at their living room." 6

On the excerpt above, the word “accused” is jargon that is used in Law which
refers to a person who is assumed to commit the crime but was not yet proven
guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The word is essentially used to give the person
the benefit of the doubt that the accusation given to him is to some extent false.
Clearly, the term was used to refer the person who is said to commit the crime in a
neutral manner.

(g) “ Tejero proffered denial and alibi as his defense” 7

In the sentence above two nouns is used to describe the testimony of the accused.
Ultimately, the court was not swayed by the testimony of the accused in proving
his innocence. What the accused did accordingly is to spread "denial" which
means the act of refusing a factual statement or to reject a something that is
deemed to be true. Furthermore, his own defense was believed to be an "alibi".

5
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
6
GR. NO. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
7
GR. NO. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 46

The word "alibi" does not refer to the more technical definition of alibi, but it
refers to a more a negative connotation of the word which is means a statement
that offers a malicious excuse of the whereabouts at the time of the act.

In addition, the argument above is the use of jargons, as illustrated in the

following excerpt.

(h) “She claimed that she was first raped by the accused
on Sunday, February 1, 2004, at their living room." 8

On the excerpt above, the word “accused” is jargon that is used in Law which
refers to a person who is assumed to commit the crime but was not yet proven
guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The word is essentially used to give the person
the benefit of the doubt that the accusation given to him is to some extent false.
Clearly, the term was used to refer the person who is said to commit the crime in a
neutral manner.

There are other, nouns used in the narrative that signals emphasis on the
particular part of the sentence, as in the sentence below.

(i) “This Court is unswayed by the foregoing

arguments.” 9

From the excerpt above, the choice of the phrase "This court" signals emphasis on
the "court". Instead of using another determiner like "we", choosing the word
"Court" is a way of putting an emphasis on the legal body that practices the law. It
presents the court as a whole entity which aids in representing neutrality in terms
of how the court upheld the standards on how they see an argument. This prevents
them on representing their individual opinions as judges and ultimately represents
the Supreme Court as one legitimate body.

8
GR. NO. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
9
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 47

(j) "No young girl would concoct a sordid tale of so serious

a crime as rape at the hands of her own father, undergo the
medical examination, then subject herself to the stigma and
embarrassment of a public trial, if her motive [was] other
than a fervent desire to seek justice” 10

In the excerpt above, the usage of the verb "subject" is used to express a sense of
force to endure an act has a negative connotation. More specifically, this pertains
to how victims have to endure the nature of the public trial. The terms "stigma"
and "embarrassment" were used to modify the nature of public trial that a rape
victim must undergo. Through this, we can infer how the Supreme Court
recognizes the extreme hardship that rape victims have to face in order to seek
justice.

Moreover, the words "shame" and "embarrassment" is used the express the
graveness of the situation that a rape victim experienced. More specifically, the
term "vulnerable" is used in the sentence to describe the current state of the
victim. This contributes in characterizing the extreme situation that a young victim
experiences. Thus, the terms "shame" and "embarrassment" amplify the situation
that young "vulnerable" victims experiences.

(k) “It is simply improbable that the private complainant

who is of tender age, innocent and guileless, would
brazenly impute crimes so serious as rape to a man she
considers as the stepfather if these were simply lies." 11

10
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Tejero
11
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 48

From the excerpt above, the word "improbable" means something that is not
likely to be true. This verb is used by the court to signify that something likely
impossible to happen in reality. Through the use of the verb "improbable" and
with the context of its usage, it would imply that there are certain pre-existing
realities that the Supreme Court believes in. Although it may not be necessarily
wrong, this would imply that the Supreme Court has an existing presupposition
even in the beginning of any cases.

4.2.1b Adjectives

In terms of describing the entirety of the narrative, the use of adjectives is

necessary because it enables more elaborate descriptions of what really had
happened in the incident. The choice of adjectives used in describing what is done
and how it is done is crucial in the narrative of the plaintiff and of the appellant
because the use of adjective does not the only function in legal narratives as
merely describing words but will also frame how people are going to perceive the
scenario thus the kind of message it sends to the larger majority.

Many of the adjectives used in the narratives manifest a kind of violence that
portrays a repetitive use of adjectives to provide an extremely elaborate
description of the event/person. Sentence (f) contains a repetitive adjective which
is deemed unnecessary.

(l) "In the evening of June 6, 2004, AAA, a minor, having

been born on April 23, 1999, was on her way to the
vegetable stall (gulayan) of a certain Manuela to buy
something." 12

Contrast the phrase introducing AAA, "a minor, having been born on April 23,
1999", with the introduction of the victim:

12
G.R. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 49

(m) “In the evening of June 6, 2003, AAA having been born
on April 23, 1999, was on her way to the vegetable stall
(gulayan) of a certain Manuela to buy something.” 13

Even without the use of the word minor, the establishment of the idea that AAA
is, in fact, an underage is still present. Not removing the label minor is indicative
of a stance of how AAA is going to be perceived in the entire case in contrast to
the accused's image in the case. Therefore, framing a situation where an underage
is taken advantage by someone who is of mature age. There are also appearances
of obvious lines of violence in terms of describing testimonies of both the
appellant and the plaintiff.

(n) “In convicting appellant, the RTC gave full credence to

AAA’s testimony, which was straightforward and positive.
On the other hand, it found appellants defenses of denial
and alibi as weak, taking into consideration that his aunt’s
house where he was allegedly doing construction [...]” 14

Describing the plaintiff's testimony as straightforward and positive establishes a

stance that a particular institution (court in this instance) is assuming especially
when the description is contrasting to how the defenses of the appellant's
testimonies are being described as defenses of denial and alibi. This is an
indicative of a stance that the court is taking on the onset of the case, which in any
case can be deemed violent in the persona of the appellant.

In describing a certain testimony, it is important that the court establishes

detachment but not too detach to not sound like taking a side or a stance in a
particular case. Another example is sentence (h);

13
G.R. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
14
G.R. No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 50

(o) “These incidents were allegedly repeated for the

third, fourth and fifth times.” 15

The use of the adjective allegedly to describe the testimony of an involved

party in a case, sends the message that in the eyes of the court, apart if not all
of the testimonies accounted to be alleged is questionably true of a specific
kind, which means that the testimony of that person is referred to the court as
invalid and not credible enough thus failure of the court to maintain
detachment.

Another noticeable adjective used is noted in the sentence (I).

(p) “The appellate court also noted that the victim's delay
in reporting the rape was not an indication of a fabricated
charge." 16

The use of the adjective noted draws emphasis towards the following that-
clause, therefore, implicitly implying that the court perceives it as relevant thus
giving it more emphasis contrary to the appellant’s defense.

There are also the appearances of adjective that actually downranked parts of
the narrative it is describing, sentence (j) contain this kind of adjective.

(q) “AAA only concluded that she had been raped when she
learned of the result of the medical.” 17

The presence of the adjective only after the verb concluded suggests that the only
reason AAA was able to realize that she was raped was because of the result of the
medical examination, which in a way implies that on the onset the result of the
medical examination influenced how she is going to see the whole scenario of
rape, thus concluding that she was raped. On the other hand, makes us question if

15
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippine v Dollano
16
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippine v Dollano
17
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippine v Poras
 51

she did not have any knowledge of the result of the medical examination would
she be able to say that she was indeed raped by the appellant.

This is how important that the Supreme Court should have critical diction in
terms of choosing how to describe certain scenarios in criminal cases because of
even the existence of adjective ‘only' changes as to how people are going to
understand the whole picture of the rape case.

Another example of this kind of adjective is sentence below:

(r) “The CA further observed that minor

inconsistencies in the victim's testimony strengthened her
credibility because they eliminated the chance of a
rehearsed testimony.”18

The use of the adjective minor to describe the inconsistencies made by the
plaintiff only suggest that there are standards already set by the institution to
when is a particular inconsistency becomes important and relevant to the case,
therefore making it look like there is a downplaying of the parts of the narrative
of the involved parties in the case, instead of it being their narratives it
becomes the narrative of the court because of the certain filters and standards it
has to go through before it can be considered relevant in the case.

In this sentence the adjective minor actually downplays the value of the
existence of the inconsistency, because we have to look at it as still
inconsistency regardless of how minor it is, it still could make a difference.
Moreover, it does not seem possible how an inconsistency which could be
considered a negative noun could actually have positive implications in a
criminal case. The court being critical in this instance is questionable.

18
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippine v Poras
 52

(s) “The CA added that the totality of established

circumstances constituted an unbroken chain of events
leading to a fair and reasonable conclusion that the
appellant had raped the victim." 19

The use of the adjective unbroken to account for the chain of events, and the
adjectives fair and reasonable to describe the conclusions that the CA made,
actually characterizes a defensive CA.

(t) “Finally, the CA stated that the appellant’s

uncorroborated alibi and denial cannot prevail over the
victim’s positive testimony.” 20

The noun alibi and denial being described as uncorroborated forms a series of
falsification in the appellant's defense, because the use of alibi and denial alone
entails that the defenses of the appellant are all not true thus describing it as
uncorroborated all the more makes it unacceptable and hateful. It characterizes
a person who will not admit that he had done the act in front of a jury that had
only already convicted him guilty of the crime.

Moreover, the use of descriptive words affects the semantic properties of the
nouns or verbs they describe, as illustrated below.

(u) “It is simply improbable that the private

complainant who is of tender age, innocent and guileless,
would brazenly impute crimes so serious as rape to a man
she considers as the stepfather if these were simply lies."21

There are several adjectives that are specifically used to describe a child rape
victim. In the first adjective, "tender" is used to describe the age of the victim.

19
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
20
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
21
GR. No. 187744, People of the Philippine v Tejero
 53

More specifically, in this context, the adverb is used to characterize that the victim
is at an age where she is young both physically and mentally young.

The adjective innocent, on the other hand, does not refer to the legal term"
innocent" which means "not guilty". However, this refers to the mental capacity of
the child that she is incapable of thinking maliciously. It was then supported by
the third adjective which is "guileless". The word "guileless" is use to describe the
victim as being incapable of dishonesty and concocting malicious statements to
inflict violence to the other party. These following adjectives are used to describe
the ability of a child rape victim, specifically on her innocence, and how the court
sees the child.

4.2.1c Verbs

Sometimes, verbs do not only indicate actions of a certain individual in a

situation, because most of the times verbs help frame a particular scenario and
establish an image of the doer of the action. In the analysis of verbs in the first
case, we have observed parts of the case that uses verbs which provides ones of
the most violent uses of the language of law in the cases.

(v) "...all of sudden, appellant pulled her towards a house

that was under construction. There he forced her to lie on a
bamboo bed (papag), removed her shorts, and underwear,
and inserted first his finger, and his penis into her vagina.
Appellant threatened to kill her is she should report the
incident to anyone." 22

22
G.R. No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 54

This part of the case focuses on the action of the accused prior to the incident of
rape, specifically how the accused started to inflict force upon the victim. By the
way, the court describes a certain situation or even the individuals involved in the
incident with the use of particular words that can portray a certain
characterization.

It can be noticed that the verbs used are all action words i.e pulled, forced,
removed, inserted and threatened to pertain to only one agent, the accused.
Therefore giving the impression that the agent is capable of inflicting pain and
force, emphasizing the agent's ability to be physically violent. It is apparent that
the verbs used are all lumped in one paragraph, therefore, making a way to
establish continuity of action in one incident.

The same is true with the sentences below:

(w)“While she and her siblings were sleeping inside their

room, appellant, who was beside her, removed her shorts
and panty, went on top of her, and then inserted his penis
into her vagina. She felt pain after that.” 23

(x) “It was nighttime and while she and her siblings were
sleeping, appellant removed her panty, went on top of her,
then inserted his penis into her vagina. She felt pain after
the incident.” 24

It is apparent that the verbs used are all action words i.e. removed, went, and
inserted pertaining to only one agent, the appellant Therefore giving the
impression that the agent is capable of inflicting pain and force, emphasizing the
agent's ability to be physically violent. It is apparent that the verbs used are all
lumped in one paragraph, therefore, making a way to establish continuity of
action in one incident.

23
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
24
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
 55

We notice a pattern then, as to how when it comes to describing how is the rape
done, there are recurring verbs pertaining to the scenario. There is always a
sense of the appellant being physically violent, ruthless and is very able to harm
and threatened the plaintiff. This way of describing the rape incident itself tells
us that in the language of the law there are existing default terms used in
describing rape incidents.

One of the most used verbs in court cases is claimed, which is used to indicate the
appellant’s testimonies against the reported incident, as in the example below
from the case being analyzed:

(y) “In defense, appellant claimed that in the evening of the

incident, he and his uncle, Romeo Matias, were doing
construction work at the house of his aunt, also located at
Sto. Nino St. Barangay San Antonio, Quezon City.” 25

(z)“BBB likewise recanted her earlier testimony and

claimed that she forgiven her father.” 26

(aa) “She claimed that she filed the case against her father
because the latter had been maltreating her.”27

Contrast the phrase portraying the appellant's testimony in the sentence (o) with
the use of the verb, state:

(bb)“In defense appellant stated that in the evening of the

incident, he and his uncle, Romeo Matias, were doing

25
G.R. No.186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
26
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
27
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
 56

construction work at the house of his aunt, also located at

Sto. Nino St., Barangay San Antonio, Quezon City.” 28

Although there are more positively-evaluated words in English to encapsulate the

how the appellant addressed the reported incident such as testify which according
to Lee-Goldman (2005), is a technical legal term in the law that has similarly even
distribution, occurring for all involved parties of the incident’s testimonies or
according to Lee-Goldman (2005), the word state can also be used instead of
claim, because it is generally neutral when it comes to evaluating the credibility
and the validity of what a person is stating. Claim on the other hand is slightly
staying away from the neutral legal terms of the law, because when it is used as a
verb in a sentence, it does not only imply an action that has been done but is also
implying that the person making the claim may not be telling or hiding the truth,
therefore framing an image of a person’s statement making the claim as a lie and a
deception in the court.

There are also adjectives uses in the narrative that is actually indicative of the
responsibility of either the appellant or the plaintiff in order to be deemed
innocent. This is illustrated in the sentence

(cc) “Moreover, for the appellant’s alibi to prosper, he

should be able to show that he was a great distance away
from the place of the incident and that it was impossible for
him to be there or within its immediate vicinity at the
commission of the crime.” 29

The use of the verb prosper to account for the need of the appellant to burgeon his
defenses is signifying that there are predetermined actions or line of testimonies

28
(G.R. 186469), People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente

29
G.R. 186469, People of the Philippine v Dela Fuente
 57

expected from the appellant therefore, whatever is the appellant’s line of defenses
would never be as good as what is expected of him to say thus forfeiting the
chances of the appellant being heard from the onset whether or not what he is
going to say is valid and credible.

(dd) “… the appellant offered her a coffee with milk. She

refused the proferred drink, but the appellant got angry
and insisted that she drink it.” 30

The part of the case which the act of rape started, which is indicative of how is the
appellant is going to be viewed throughout the case. By the way, the scenario is
being described knowingly/unknowingly, an image of the appellant as someone
who is capable of inflicting force upon an individual.

With the use of the sequential action words i.e. offered, angry, and insisted; all
lumped in one cohesive sentence pertaining to only one doer, it becomes apparent
then that there is an emphasis on the appellant's ability to be physically violent
and controlling, therefore an image of a violent person.

(ee) “She saw the appellant beside her when she woke up
in the early morning of the next day. The appellant was
moving on top of her and touching her private parts. She
also noticed that the strap of her bra had been removed
and she is panty already on her knees. When she pushed
the appellant, the latter raised his brief and went to his
room, threatening to kill her if she would disclose the
incident to anyone .” 31

the use of verbs + ing (moving, touching, threatening) to indicate that the action is
progressive at the time when the plaintiff woke up, which is noticeably followed

30
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippine v Poras
31
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
 58

by the past form noticed, removed, pushed. It becomes apparent then that there is
a shift in tense used in a one supposedly cohesive sentence.

(dd) AAA further narrated that she had known the

appellant since she was six (6) years of old and resented
him because he was a manyakis. 32

The use of the past tense resented which means that in the past the plaintiff
already is knowledgeable to the motive of the appellant, therefore, characterizing
a history of the abuse.

Moreover, the use of the Tagalog word manyakis instead of its English equivalent
pervert, nonetheless put emphasis on the word especially when it is the only part
of the sentence that is not translated.

If we are going to compare the use of the Tagalog manyakis to pervert instead, the
former is much more heavy compared to the latter because of the fact that it is in
our mother tongue and we have categories and degrees of when a word is
acceptable and unacceptable in our register, therefore, characterizing the appellant
as someone with an unacceptable behavior.

(ee) “AAA reiterated that CCC was no longer on the

mattress where they slept when she woke up.” 33

The use of the past form reiterate signifies emphasis, because it means that what is
being referred as reiterated has been mentioned in previous statements. Therefore,
gets more attention compared to what is being stated in the sentence.

32
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
33
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
 59

(ee) “It (CA) ruled that the appellant failed to show that it
was physically impossible for him to be at the crime scene
at the time of commission.” 34

The use of the verb failed signifies that there is a pre-determined responsibility
that is being accounted towards the appellant to prove or do something in order for
the court to actually side with him or even make him win the case.

(ff) “The CA ruled that it is highly unlikely for a young girl

to fabricate a story that would destroy herreputation and
her family's life and endure the discomforts of the trial." 35

The Court of Appeals stating that it is highly not likely for a young girl to
fabricate [to invent] a story that would destroy her reputation […], denotes that
the Court of Appeals has set of standards when is someone capable of making
up a story, therefore signifies that just because a young girl would not likely to
invent a story then even if the appellant has valid and credible defenses, he
would still be deemed guilty because of this predetermined standard in an
institution.

(gg) “She claimed that she was first raped by the accused
on Sunday, February 1, 2004, at their living room. In her
sworn statement which formed part of her testimony, she
stated that this happened at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon
when her mother was out selling vegetables and while her
two siblings went to the family house of their maternal
grandparents. She narrated that she was suddenly pulled

34
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
35
G.R. No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 60

by her stepfather, removed her clothes, and then raped

her.” 36

On the same paragraph, the verb “claim” pertains to the statements believed by the
victim. Moreover, the term “claimed” presupposes that the statement of the victim
is yet to be proven. Furthermore, this verb may have a negative connotation that
the statements may be false. According to (Lee-Goldman, 2005) the verb “claim”
has a strong implication that the person may not be telling the truth and is to some
extent lying.

Followed by another verb, “Stated” is far more neutral than “Claim”. The word
“stated” is more neutral in a way that it doesn’t have a negative nor positive
connotation about the statement.

The verb “narrated” was a verb which denotes to the “act of story-telling” which
is more suitable in the context of the statement because it was then followed by
the action committed by the accused.

The Act of rape is presented in a simple manner without picturing clear vivid
images. This is present with the usage of the verb “raped” in the last sentence of
the paragraph. With this statement, the usage of the verb “raped” presupposes that
the following action done by the accused fall already under the standards
established by the law of what constitutes rape.

(hh) “According to accused-appellant, it was impossible

for him to have raped AAA in December 2000 since there
were other persons inside the bedroom at that time” 37

36
G.R. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
37
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
 61

From the excerpt above, the use of “According” is utilized to directly refer the
accused’s statement. Furthermore, the use of this word would allow the court to
directly refer to the accused’s narrative of testimony in a detached manner.

(ii) “It is well-entrenched in this jurisdiction that when the

offended parties are young and immature girls, as in this
case, courts are inclined to lend credence to their version
of what transpired, considering not only their relative
vulnerability but also the shame and embarrassment to
which they would be exposed if the matter about which they
testified were not true.” 38

In the excerpt above, the words “well-entrenched”, “incline” and “lend” all share a
semantic configuration that denotes a sense of predisposition. In the first account,
the word “well-entrenched” suggests a strong and firm establishment of a belief.
Within the context of the sentence, the word itself presents that the jurisdiction has
a firm stance in giving credence to the testimony of young victims. Moreover, it
was then followed by the words “incline” and “lend” which suggest a sense of
giving favor to a certain narrative because of an existing belief established in the
jurisprudence.

Moreover, the words “shame” and “embarrassment” is used the express the
graveness of the situation that a rape victim experienced. More specifically, the
term “vulnerable” is used in the sentence to describe the current state of the
victim. This contributes in characterizing the extreme situation that a young victim
experiences. Thus, the terms “shame” and “embarrassment” amplify the situation
that young “vulnerable” victims experiences.

38
GR. No. 187744, People of the Philippine v Tejero
 62

(jj)“On April 27, 2002, after the wedding of another

daughter of CCC, DDD told CCC that AAA was raped by
the accused-appellant” 39

From the excerpt above, the word "told" suggest a simple manner of reporting. It
is quite unnatural to use the word "told" as reporting verb especially that the
nature of the report is an act considered to be heinous. However, the use of simple
declarative reporting verb such that of "told" is an attempt of the Supreme Court
to detach the written narrative with the real scenario.

(kk)“The following day, DDD and AAA went to the

Department of Social Welfare and Development
(DSWD) office in their locality but were advised to
bring AAA to a doctor for examination” 40

In the following excerpt, the usage of the term “went” suggest a sense of
normality and naturalness that the victim together with her grandfather would go
to the said place. Again, contrary to the actual scenario, the use of the verb “went”
perhaps is an understatement to the actual reality of reporting a crime. However,
the usage of the term signals simplicity of doing an action. The use of a simple
verb is a manner by which the Court positions itself in a non-evasive way.

(ll)“AAA rendered a complete and credible narration of

her ordeal at the hands of the accused, whom she positively
identified in court.” 41

From the excerpt above, the verb “render” refers to the official reporting of a
narrative. The word signifies how the subject was able to promulgate a legitimate

39
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
40
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
41
GR. No. 181491, People of the Philippines v Arcillas
 63

and justified narrative. The verb “rendered” strengthens the description of the
victim’s narrative.

(mm)“She found out that accused Henry Arcillas was on

top of her”42

From the excerpt narrative above, the verbal phrase found out was used to
describe how the victim was able to determine the accused to be on top of her.
The use of this verb phrase signifies a late realization from the subject.
Subsequently, the verbal phrase used is used to simplify the description of the
action in order for the narrative to be less dramatized.

4.2.1d Adverb

There are also instances where the use of adverbs affect semantic properties of
words it describes in the sentence, the use of these kinds of adverbs can signify
into a lot of things, such as how the action is done and the manner of
modification it does the entirety of the narrative. As in the excerpt below:

(nn)“She narrated that she was suddenly pulled by her

stepfather, removed her clothes and then raped her” 43

The adverb “suddenly” is an adverb of manner which is use to modify the manner
of the action done. This was used in the sentence to present the abrupt and
unexpected act of pulling done by accused.

(oo)“It is simply improbable that the private complainant

who is of tender age, innocent and guileless, would
brazenly impute crimes so serious as rape to a man she
considers as the stepfather if these were simply lies." 44

42
GR. No. 181491, People of the Philippines v Arcillas
43
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
44
GR. N. 187734, People of the Philippines v Agaton
 64

The adverb "simply" which is an adverb of manner is use here to show that it was
"easy" to understand or could be inferred easily that a victim at a young age would
not claim such grave accusation to her stepfather unless otherwise, it is true.

Secondly, the adverb "brazenly" is used to modify the act of imputing the crime.
This adverb perfectly fit the verb it modifies which is "impute" to describe how
bold that act of accusation when it comes to rape. More importantly, the root word
of "brazenly" which is "brazen" is denoted as an "act done in a very open and
shocking way without shame or embarrassment" according to Merriam-Webster.

(pp)“The trial judge was placed in the unique

position to discern whether she was telling the truth
or inventing it after having personally observed
AAA’s conduct and demeanor as a witness” 45

From the excerpt above, the use of the adverb "personally" is used to modify the
verb "observed". In this context, the word may denote an individual's own view
and perspective. The whole sentence refers to how the trial judge is given the
power to use his/her personal judgment in observing the manner and demeanor of
the witness. The use of this adverb may lead us in identifying that the court
allows "personal" observation and/or judgments to be used by the trial court.

4.2.2 Grammatical Categories

Sentence Complexity

The construction of the sentence types of narrative from the Supreme

Court for each case are mostly declarative, which is a statement type of sentence
because and are used to unfold narrative events, but rarely is there an

45
GR. No. 18149, People of the Philippines v Arcillas
 65

interrogative, exclamatory and imperative types of sentences because these kinds

of sentences are mostly found in cross examinations, where the person being
examined is allowed to picture out the scenario/ordeal she/he has in mind with
the use of the combinations of these kinds of sentences. However, in legal
narratives, in terms of complexity, they vary a great deal depending on the
context as to when sentences are compound, complex, compound-complex and
simple. This category can be analyzed in consideration of the sentence length
and relationships of the clauses that can reveal whether or not there is a violence
embedded in these kinds of legal narratives. Such sentence type will be analyzed
thoroughly in its complexity and combination with other types.

(qq) "In the evening of June 6, 2004, AAA, a minor, having

been born on April 23, 1991, was on her way to the
vegetable stall of a certain Manuela to buy something
when, all of a sudden, appellant pulled her towards a house
that was under construction. There, he forced her to lie on
a bamboo bed, removed her shorts, and underwear, and
inserted first his finger, and then his penis into her vagina."
46

It is most obvious in this paragraph the fact that there is a shift in the noun phrase;
in the first clause, AAA is the subject which means that she is the doer of the first
action, but a cut in the continuity is made in the insertion of the transition phrase
‘all of a sudden’ that marked the shift in the subject in the last clause.

Series of subordinating clauses, occurring in a structure like sentence (BB),

denotes the cause and effect of the accounted independent clause, if the
independent clause did not happen then the series of subordinating clauses would
not exist in the first place thus building the context of violence that started from a

46
G.R. No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 66

seemingly ordinary event of minor, AAA, on her way to a vegetable stall and then
shifted into another scenario which is even prolonged in the types of sentences
used to describe it.

(rr) “Moreover, for the appellant’s alibi to prosper, he

should be able to show that he was a great distance away
from the place of the incident and that it was impossible for
him to be there or within its immediate vicinity at the of the
commission of the crime.” 47

The use of the dependent clause headed by a coordinating conjunction that would
eventually lead to the effect of it happening, only shows the progression within the
complex sentence, and the obvious shift in the subject is very apparent, from the
appellant as the subject referred to in the “he” to “it” to refer the idea that it was
impossible for him to be there.

(ss) “In defense, appellant claimed that in the evening of

the incident, he and his uncle, Romeo Matias, were doing
construction at the house of his aunt, also located at Sto.
Nino St., Barangay San Antonio, Quezon City. He was
therefore surprised when two policemen arrested him at
around 6:30 in the evening of even date and detained him
at the Baler Police Station. 48

Simple sentences can be characterized in this legal narrative in two ways: (a)
when it contain one subject and one verb (predicate), (b) when it is in a series
of parallel sentences but is pertaining to one noun phrase.

In a simple sentence where there is a subject followed by two or more

predicates, it only means then that that one subject is doing or is undergoing
that series of action in single continuous movement, without pauses.

47
G.R. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
48
G.R. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
 67

(tt)"She and her siblings were sleeping inside their room,

appellant, who was beside her, removed her shorts and
panty, went on top of her, then inserted his penis into her
vagina." 49

There are four verb phrases in the simple sentence above; first is headed by the
past plural form were, second is headed by the pronoun who to refer to the
noun appellant, third headed by the past form of go which is went while the last
phrase is headed by the adverb then to indicate what happens next prior to the
event before it, but all the noun phrases following each verb phrases have
different thematic role to the sentence construct. This only insinuates the
progression and sequence of action from the same subject or doer of the action.
The telling of the subject's ability to inflict violence, it is apparent also that
these actions being amassed in one simple sentence imply the pacing of the
subject's movement, therefore is a manifestation of violence portrayed
sequentially. The close distance between the verb phrases also make these
actions as though they are done without pauses and done right after another.
Therefore, characterizing the subject as someone who is capable of doing
violent actions and is, therefore, guilty of the crime.

Another form of a simple sentence used in narratives is sentences (tt) and (uu);

In a paragraph, for example, some sentences can be short, some sentences can
be moderately short and some can be of a considerable length, but what is most
compelling in the composition of sentences is the use of simple sentence with a
simple subject and a simple predicate is that they are good in achieving
emphasis on the focus of the sentence.

(vv) “AAA was raped by her father, the appellant.” 50

49
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
50
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
 68

(ww)“BBB was raped twice by her father, the appellant.”

51

In this type of sentence, it is only AAA and the fact that she was raped, is what
can be comprehended, which is obviously indicative of extreme emphasis the
rape that had happened and the father as the perpetrator.

Aside from simple sentences, discreet forms of violence can also manifest in
other complexities of sentences, as the sentence (vv), illustrates:

(xx) However, she (AAA) could not ask help from her
brothers, who were sound asleep, because of fear as her
father was then holding a bolo.” 52

The use of the conjunctive adverb "however" somehow evidently makes a

contrastive line with the fact that AAA even when she had the chance to ask for
help she simply could not because of her father is holding a bolo. This then
presupposes that more than the subordinating conjunction (because of fear as
her father was then holding a bolo) lies the general idea that her father is going
to hurt them with the bolo if she makes noise or ask help from her brothers.

(yy) "Again, appellant removed her shorts and panty, then

inserted his penis into her vagina." 53

Again as a conjunctive adverb which is employed in the sentence to show that it

accounts for an additional action and/or repetition of action, only suggest that it
is not the first time that the appellant had done the action. Therefore, entails that
a repeated abuse of the victim was done by the appellant. The use of ‘again’ and
‘then’ somehow postulates that the action pertaining has been done habitual or is
done regularly by the appellant.

51
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
52
(G.R No. 188851), People of the Philippines v Dollano
53
(G.R No. 188851), People of the Philippines v Dollano
 69

(zz) "In a sudden turn of events, more than four years after
they testified in court for the prosecution, AAA and BBB
retracted their previous testimonies that they were raped by
their father." 54

The sentence is headed by the phrase “in a sudden turn of events” in which
sudden is indeed used as a noun with the modifier indefinite article “a” and at
the same time as an alternative adverbial phrase to suggest an abrupt
occurrence or change of what is deemed true in the narrative, therefore
emphasizing the obsoleteness of the abrupt change in the narrative, especially
when the following independent clause contains the verb “retracted” which
suggest that it contradicts the previously given statement by AAA and BBB.

The use of the phrase ‘in a sudden turn of events' suggests that somehow the
change is addressed indifferently by the court thus making it seem as though
the retraction done is disagreeable in any circumstance.

(aaa) “AAA explained that she was recanting her testimony

because she had forgiven her father and he already
suffered for a long time and repented for what he had
done.” 55

The sentence is headed by a dependent clause with the noun phrase AAA as the
agent of the action ‘explained’, which is expanded with the use of the
subordinating clause headed by the subordinating conjunction ‘that’ to expand
what is being explained by AAA which is the followed by another
subordinating clause with ‘because’ as its linker pertaining to the idea that all
of AAA’s explanation is to be accounted for the fact that AAA has forgiven her
father and that he has suffered for a long time.

54
GR. No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
55
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
 70

This only suggest that AAA is recanting her testimony not because her father
is innocent of the act of rape but because of the entailment that lies within the
construction of the sentence that her father had raped her but she has forgiven
her so she is recanting her statement, but it does not erase the unintended
meaning that she is actually raped by her father.

(bbb) “Indeed, AAA and BBB claimed that they lied when
they first testified and the truth is that they charged
appellant with such grave offenses because they were mad
at him for having maltreated them. However, records show
that when they are asked why they were recanting their
initial testimony, private complainants explained that they
had forgiven their father.” 56

The use of the adverb ‘indeed' to start a sentence that contains the verb
‘claimed' only empowers the idea that what is to be claimed in the following
sentences has the high probability of not being true or real.

The presence of the conjunctive adverb ‘however’ actually suggest that the
previous claim in the sentence is actually questionable because it is contrasting
the records in the previously obtained narratives from AAA and BBB,
therefore is actually suggesting that what is being claimed is highly impossible
to happen.

(a) “She refused the preferred drink, but the appellant got
angry and insisted that she drink it.” 57

The compound-complex sentence is headed by an independent clause with She as

the subject/agent, refused as the verb followed by the direct object proffered drink,
the shift in the agent becomes apparent with the dependent clause headed by the
coordinating conjunction but which suggest a contrast to the previous clause. In

56
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
57
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippine v Agaton
 71

the independent clause the agent of the action is she (AAA) which means that the
focus is on AAA but an abrupt shift of focus happened with the dependent clause
focusing on the appellant's response to the refusal of AAA which is even
expanded in the next dependent clause which focuses on how the appellant
insisted that AAA drink it.

If you try to look at it, even when the sentence started with AAA as the subject
in the latter parts of the entire focused more on the appellant, which implies that
within the sentence there exists an overpowering of the narrative of the plaintiff,
characterizing a marginalized plaintiff.

(b) When she pushed the appellant, the latter raised his
brief and went to his room, threatening to kill her if she
would disclose the incident to anyone.” 58

Starting the sentence with a dependent clause headed by the adverb of time when
followed by an independent clause saying that the appellant raised his brief,
another dependent clause (went to his room), and then another dependent clause
headed by a comma (threatening to kill her) and finally followed by another
dependent clause headed by the conjunction which is an indicative of
conditionality which actually implies that if AAA apparently does the opposite of
what is commanded to her then she would be harmed.

A compound-complex sentence headed by a dependent clause only implies that

without the action contained in the dependent clause then the following clauses
would not exist in the first place, therefore making the action of pushing the
appellant the triggering tool of threatening because it suggests a resistance to the
act being done at the moment.

(c) “She did not call for help because she felt weak.”59

58
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Agaton
 72

The compound sentence headed by an independent clause with the agent she
(AAA) as the doer of the verb followed by a dependent clause headed by a
subordinating conjunction because which suggest that the action in the dependent
clause is attributable to the action in the previous clause, therefore, emphasizing
cause and effect scenario putting more emphasis on the cause why AAA was not
able to call for help. Therefore drawing attention towards why AAA felt weak in
the first place.

(d) “AAA only concluded that she had been raped

when she learned of the result of the medical
examination and because she felt weak when she
60
woke up.”

The independent clause with a that-clause (that she had been raped) followed by
a dependent clause headed by an adverb of time (when she learned of the
result…) actually is attributing the conclusion made by AAA was highly
influenced by the medical result, therefore, characterizing AAA as the victim of
a highly imagined rape incident.

The majority of the sentences used in the decisions are declarative. In fact, it is
highly unlikely to identify other sentence types such as imperative, Exclamatory
and Interrogative. However, in the case of interrogative sentences, there are
instances where it is used to present an excerpt of the cross-examination part if it
is significant in the decision process. Subsequently, in terms of the type of
sentence structure, the sentences vary depending on their use within the narratives.

A simple sentence is usually preceded and followed by phrases. One example

is the paragraph below:

(e) “On February 8, 2004, the next Sunday, the accused

again raped her in their living room in the same house. At

59
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Agaton
60
G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
 73

that time, her mother was selling vegetables again in

another barangay while the accused fended off her sisters
to the family house of their maternal grandparents again.
In her sworn statement, she observed that his breath even
stank with alcohol when he was raping her. The accused
also pointed a rifle at her to threaten her.” 61

The first sentence is a simple sentence. However, there are series of

phrases found within the sentence. The first phrase preceding the independent
clause is a prepositional phrase of time. It is important to note that the preposition
indicates the specific date (Month, date and Year). This is specifically used to
establish the correct time frame of the following narratives. The prepositional
phrase was then followed by a noun phrase that still indicates the specific day of
the action. After the independent clause, it was the followed by a prepositional
phrase that indicates the specific place and was followed by a prepositional phrase
again that marks a specific place with boundaries.

It is important to note that these types of prepositional phrase are

condensed in a single sentence in order to firmly establish the correct time, date
and location of the act. More than just for the sake of convenience, it is utilized in
order to avoid ambiguousness.

The next sentence found in the paragraph is a compound sentence. The

same with the first sentence, it also contains a series of phrases that are important
to point out. The sentence started with a prepositional phrase that indicates the
time. Another phrase that is found in the same sentence is a prepositional phrase
that indicates direction. After the two independent clauses, there are two
preposition phrases that succeeded these clauses. These are the prepositional
phrase that indicates the location and belongingness. The following sentence is in
a compound-complex sentence. It is also preceded by a prepositional phrase.

61
G.R. NO. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 74

It is noticeable how each sentence contains various prepositional phrases.

More specifically the majority of the sentences starts with a preposition phrase.
Generally, the use of these prepositional phrases in the beginning of the sentences
is to establish the narrative in a correct and specific manner. This is observable
through the use of preposition of time and place. Moreover, the existence of these
prepositional phrases is to ensure that the sentence is not going to be ambiguous
and confusing. More specifically, the use of these phrases is to ensure that the
author and the readers are on the same page.

Another important note in the use of the sentence is through series of the verbal
phrase. These verbal phrases are used in: (1) thematic sequencing and (2)
emphasis

(f) “A young girl would not usually concoct a tale of

defloration; publicly admit having been ravished and her
honor tainted; allow the examination of her private parts;
and undergo all the trouble and inconvenience, not to
mention the trauma and scandal of a public trial, had she
not in fact been raped and been truly moved to protect and
preserve her honor, and motivated by the desire to obtain
justice for the wicked acts committed against her.” 62

From the excerpt sentence above, it started with an independent clause that talks
about A "young girl" as a subject. The series of the verbal phrase was separated
through the use of the semi-colon. The use of semi-colon with this sentence is to
distinctly separate each verb phrase from each other. It is important to note that
semi-colon are markers that a stronger than a comma when it comes to breaking
phrases and clauses. The series of verb phrase are used to clearly present the

62
G.R. No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 75

horrors that victim of rape will undergo in order to seek justice. The sequencing of
these phrases leads to understanding rape in general. Furthermore, it clearly shows
how the court sees rape in general and how they treat it as a confidential subject.
Moreover, these verb phrases are used to give emphasis in each aspect of the
entire process of judging a rape case. In this manner, it is easy to picture out the
experience of the subject in the entire case.

The length of the sentences functions also to send the appropriate message to the
author or the writer.

A unique style that is observable within the language of the Supreme Court is the
used of the phrases to establish the premise of a series of arguments. This type of
style has been foreshadowed in the previous analysis. Since the court is fond of
using phrases to establish time and location, in this case, it is also used in
establishing the basic context of an argument such as the excerpt below:

(g) “This court is unswayed by the foregoing arguments. In

the determination of the credibility of witnesses, this Court,
as a general rule, will not disturb the findings of the trial
court unless it plainly overlooked certain fact of
substance….In the case at bar specifically, the trial court
was in the best position to determine whether AAA’s facial
expression and demeanor manifested a blithe unconcern
about the alleged injustice done to her…” 63

It is observable with the excerpt above how phrases are used to establish a basic
context. For instance the phrase “In the determination of the credibility of
witnesses”, it is used to clarify the context of the preceding argument. Similarly,
the second phrase “In the case at bar specifically”, it is also used the same way as

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the first phrase. This technique is effective especially when there are several
arguments that will be discussed in the narrative.

Short sentences that can be unusually found in a narrative that is mostly composed
of long and embedded sentences can create an effect. As mentioned by
Alinsangan & Dela Curz (2013), short sentences are good for achieving the
emphasis on important ideas. This instance is apparent in the excerpt below:

(h) "Accused-appellant similarly argued in Criminal Case

No. 4467 that it was impossible for him to have raped AAA
when the latter's uncle, mother, and siblings were within 50
meters of them. We disagree.” 64

The simple sentence created an impact and emphasis with regards to the
"disagreement" with the Court. Furthermore, this particular sentence gives a
sense of imposition with regards to the belief of the author.

The use of the series of phrases in the presentation of the narrative is to exhibit the
pieces of evidence used both by the appellant and the accused.

(i) “In the evening of May 12, 2000, AAA, then barely
thirteen (13) years old, as evidenced by her certificate of
love birth, went to sleep in a room shanty in Magsaysay,
Uson, Masbate, together with her two sisters, CCC and
EEE, her mother and the latter's live-in partner, accused
Henry Arcillas." 65

From the excerpt above, it can be clearly seen how the series of phrases
contributed to the length of the sentence. The general idea of the sentence is to
show the time of the incident and how the victim went to sleep. However, instead
of simplifying the idea, the series of phrases were used in order to include

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significant information within the narrative. These series of phrases are mainly
about the following: (a) the time (b) exact date of the incident (c) the age of the
victim (d) the type of room (e) the exact address (f) the list of individuals present
during the incident (g) the relationship of the family’s victim with the accused.
These phrases were used to establish the correct setting and time and to establish
this significant information in order to disambiguate the whole narrative.

Similar to the previous analysis, a simple sentence expressed in short length was
used to stress a certain idea. This is observable in the excerpt below:

(j) “As to civil liability, both lower courts united in

ordering Arcillas to pay to AAA PHP 50,000 as civil
indemnity and another PHP 50,000 as moral
damages. They were correct.” 66

Because of the fact that most of the sentences found in the narrative are long in
terms of length, simple sentences that are short creates an impact. Specifically, it
creates the sense of conviction and strength in the narrative.

4.2.3 Context and Cohesion

4.2.3a Cohesion

In guarantee of cohesion within the whole legal narrative, the language of law
employs cohesive devices such as punctuation marks, conjunctions, transitions
and the use of references that are essential to the narrative. These kinds of devices
denote the relationships between sentences that describes the events in the
narrative. In other words, cohesive devices are used to linked by relational
elements which combine them into a unified whole that can be called a narrative.
In order to guarantee cohesion within the whole narrative, it is apt that the

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narrative employs cohesive devices such as punctuation marks like comma,

connectors by means of logical relations like conjunctions and conjunctive
adjuncts

The most common tool in making a text cohesive is the use of conjunctions such
as for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so, which are frequently used in compound
sentences or compound predicates to bind series of action alto, emphasizing
progression and continuity of movement accounting to one doer of the action.
Halliday and Hasan (1994) assert that conjunctions are a specification of the way
in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before.
The use of conjunctions is illustrated in the following sentences.

(k) “There, he forced her to lie on a bamboo bed, removed

her shorts and underwear, and inserted his finger first, and
then his penis into her vagina.” 67

(l) “Appellant threatened to kill her if she should report the

incident to anyone.” 68

The conjunctions, “and” and “if” not only occur in between clauses, they can also
be found at the beginning of sentences, and therefore signifies coherence
pertaining to only one subject. In sentence (a), conjunction and functions as an
expansion of the primary clause, in this case, primary clause focused on the
manner that the rape incident itself started, secondary clause headed by and
expands and modify this scenario by providing additional information, thus
prolonging the suffering of AAA using the combinations of this sentences.

Another cohesive device that denotes the connection between various events in
one sentence, is the use of punctuation marks. The most common punctuation
mark is comma which is used to link a series of phrases or clauses in a sentence.

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An example is a following sentence.

(m) "A physical examination was conducted by the Police

Chief Inspector Pierre-Paul Figeroa Carpio upon AAA,
who was found to have deep healed lacerations at 3 and 7
o'clock positions and was in a nonvirgin state physically at
the time of examination." 69

In the sentences above, the series of predicates following noun phrases with
different thematic roles still are still linked to each other using the punctuation
mark comma, therefore not breaking the continuity and thus bridging the different
thematic roles of the noun phrases. Therefore, here exist the main clause and that
all other clauses following are all dependent to that main clause, thus emphasizing
the main clause. In any way, it is an evident manifestation of violence in this part
of the narrative because we notice that what is being focused on the main clause is
the physical examination conducted by AAA, expanding and modifying by adding
details using the cohesive device punctuation marks.

Conjunctive adverbs can also be used as a tool to achieve cohesion within a

sentence but behave differently unlike other connectors.

Conjunctive adverbs link two main clauses that will necessarily introduce
interruption, the conclusion of a single main idea. The use of time sequence
markers such as while, finally, at the time, etc is observable in the sentences
below.

(n)“The first incident occurred at nighttime, inside their

house, but AAA could not recall the exact date when it
happened.” 70

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(o) “The second incident took place when she was in grade
II inside their hut in the mountain of Hihhid, Matnog,
Sorsogon. 71

(p)“At the time, her mother was already dead for more or
less three months." 72

(q)“While she and her siblings were sleeping inside their

room.” 73

(r) “Finally, the court declared that to be effective, pardon

must be bestowed before the institution of the criminal
action." 74

The connections in these sentences are obvious because the use of the conjunctive
adverb time sequence clearly expresses the relationship of the first clause to the
second clause. With the use of time sequence adverb first, to account for the
narrative presentation suggest that there is always a second and a third, thus, if
first is used to describe the rape incident there always a second scenario of that
kind of incident and a third and so on.

As in another case, the use of conjunctive adverb time sequence is also noticeable,
especially that it is the way how the court grounded its decision.

(s)“First, the result of the medical examination did not in

any way support AAA’s claim that the appellant had sex
with her.” 75

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G.R. No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
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(t) “Second, we find it highly unlikely that the appellant

inserted his penis into AAA’s vagina while the latter’s
panty was lowered to her knees.” 76
(u)“Third, considering that AAA was an unmarried 13
years old, she would have been in unusually deep sleep in
order to not feel the pain and sensation reasonably
expected from the insertion of a penis into her young,
vaginal canal.”77

(v)“Fourth, we cannot equate AAA’s testimony of pain in

her private parts with rape.” 78

(w)“Fifth, the testimonies of the other prosecution witnesses

did not establish with moral certainty that the appellant
raped AAA.” 79

(x)“Finally, we cannot help but observe that AAA, in her

direct testimony, revealed that she merely came to the
conclusion that the appellant had raped her after being told
by the examining physician that the result of the medical
examination was positive.”80

The use of time sequence as a cohesive device is the projection of hierarchy of

ideas. It implies that the last sentence with finally serves as the conclusion of the
what is stated in the first, second, third and so on.

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There are also instances that cohesion in sentences or in paragraphs is the

semantic one, which refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text.
Moreover, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion occurs where the
interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another.

(y) "She recalled that CCC was no longer beside her when
she woke up but was lying outside of the mat."81

(z) "The appellant testified that he knew AAA because of

the latter's mother FFF, was his common-law wife."82

In sentence B, the first (independent clause) is linked to the second

independent clause with the use of the subordinating conjunction because in
order to show that the first clause is the effect of the second independent clause.
Therefore this shows securing cohesion within the entirety of the sentence

There are different conjunctions, punctuation and other logical connectors that
were employed in the text. The use of these conjunctions according to Embradura
& Balgoa (2015), conjunctions would denote the relationship of what it connects.

The most common conjunction used in the text is “and” in order to connect two
independent clauses and related words.
In certain context, the use of "and" is to connect two related sentences. But this
does not merely for connection purposes but it is used to emphasize certain
statements. For example the sentences below:

(a) “AAA was firm and unrelenting in pointing to

Tejero as the one who raped her on three occasions”83

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G.R. No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
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(b) “AAAs testimony was candid, spontaneous, and

consistent…” 84
(c) “In comparison to the evidence for the prosecution,
Tejero proffered denial and alibi as his defense.”85

It can be clearly seen from the excerpts above how “and” was used to connect two
or more synonymous and related words.
In the first occasion, the two words "firm' and "unrelenting" was used in order to
emphasize the strength of the victim's testimony. On the same breath, the second
sentence used three related words and was connected through comma and the
conjunction "and" also to emphasize the subject. Furthermore, the sequencing of
these words is effective in strengthening what it modifies. Similar with the other
occasion, the last sentence also uses the conjunction "and" for to emphasize and to
clearly portray the testimony of the accused as mere lies. Furthermore, the use of
this cohesive device in connecting two or more words is to strengthen the object
modifying the subject.
Another common logical connector that was used in order to make the text more
cohesive is the simple adverbial subordinate "when". The simple adverbial
subordinate "when" is specifically used in the text as a marker of temporal
relationship. This is observable in the sentence below:

(d) “The defense could not even shake the credibility of

the young victim when they subjected her to a rigorous
cross-examination…”86

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G.R. No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
 84

The adverbial subordinate “when” is used in this sentence to logically connect two
clauses that are in a different time frame. In this occasion, the marker “when” is
used to see a certain time frame, in this context, during the cross-examination
process.
Another salient adverb that is used in order to a make a sentence cohesive is the
adverb “respectively”. There are several instances where this adverb is employed
in the narrative. The main function of this adverb is to (a) disambiguate and (b)
emphasize. This is observable with the following sentence below.

The defense could not even shake the credibility of the young victim when they
subjected her to rigorous cross-examination nor even point to any malicious
motivation by the defendant’s step-daughter or her mother why they would say
brazen lies that could destroy not just any ordinary man but their very own
stepfather and husband, respectively.

It can be inferred that the length of the sentences can greatly affect the
cohesiveness of the sentence and may, often times, lead to ambiguity. From the
excerpt above, the adverb “respectively” is used to clarify that the "stepfather"
and the "husband" that was mention is referring to the same man which is the
accused. Without the use of this specific adverb, it may lead to a more ambiguous
statement. It would be ambiguous in the way that readers may think that the words
"stepfather" and "husband" may refer to two different people. Moreover, the
adverb also used to emphasize the relationship of the accused with the victim and
her mother.

Conjunctive adverbials are salient in most part of the narrative. According to

Freeman-larsen & Marianne (1999), nearly all of the Conjunctive adverbials fall
in inferential connectors. For instance, the use of the conjunctive adverbial
“However” is use to clarify certainty between two contrastive clauses and/or
phrase. This is shown in the excerpt below:
 85

(e) “Without corroborating witnesses, however, Tejeros

testimony is essentially self-serving." 87

Cleary, “however” is used to clarify the certainty of the accused testimony as

"self-serving" because of the fact that he failed to present witnesses. This marker
is effective in making an independent clause, as an inference, more concise.

Another conjunctive adverbial that is commonly used in the corpus and even in
common text is the word “Therefore”. This conjunctive adverbial is commonly
used to present a general causal relationship between clauses, phrases, and
sentences. An excerpt from the corpus is presented to see how this conjunctive
adverbial is used.

(f) “Intimidation is addressed to the mind of the victim

and is, therefore, subjective.”88

The independent clause was set as a basic premise of the inference. Clearly, the
constructed inference is presented through the use of the conjunctive adverbial
"therefore". This manner creates a direct causal relationship between the
independent clause with the adverbial phrase. The relationship of the premise and
the constructed inference is direct and concise through the use of the marker
"therefore".

An apparent manner of presenting a narrative of the appellant is through the use

of the word “since”. Logical Connectors are commonly used in order to create
more cohesive thoughts. Other than the logical connector “because”, another
observable logical connector used is the adverbial subordinator “since”. An
excerpt above is taken to show the use of since:

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(g) “According to accused-appellant, it was impossible

for him to have raped AAA in December 2000 since there
were other persons inside the bedroom at that time."89
(h) “It was also impossible for him to have raped AAA
on March 14, 2002, since there were many people around
at that time…"90

From the excerpt above, it can be inferred how the adverbial subordinator helped
maintain the cohesion of the sentence by connecting the premise of the statement
and the reason. In this way, it is easier to connect the causality of statements.

In order to prevent ambiguous sentences, reasons are usually lumped in one

sentence. The logical connectors are used to make the sentence cohesive. An
excerpt is presented below:

(i) “It was CCC and DDD who initiated the cases
against him because of their grudge against him as he was
asking for their share in a parcel of land that was
transferred to his sister-in-law.” 91

A prepositional construction “because of” was followed by a noun object.

This prepositional construction is used to present a reason. In order to clearly
portray the important information of the testimony, another logical connector was
used to show a truth-conditional statement. The phrase “because of” is then
connected by simple adverbial subordinate “as” in order to show the manner of
the preceding clause and/ or phrase. Furthermore, a subordinating conjunction
“that” was used to add essential information in the sentence there are instances
where the arguments of the court are not always absolute and they needed to
present the exclusive instance when the argument can’t be used. In order to

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present this, subordinating conjunctions are used to make the preceding

independent clause less important and to highlight the following clause. This is
observable in the excerpt below:

(j) “In the determination of the credibility of witnesses,

this court, as a general rule, will not disturb the findings of
the trial court unless it plainly overlooked certain facts of
substance and value that, if considered, might affect the
outcome of the case.”92

The subordinating clause “unless” is used to give emphasis on the following

clause and at the same time, it is used to weaken the preceding clause. Moreover,
this particular subordinating clause is effective in sending the notion on what
certain standard should the findings of the trial court is investigated. On the other
hand, the adverbial subordinate “if” is used to present a condition. Furthermore,
the punctuation mark that was used emphasizes the condition and strengthens the
following dependent clause.

An observable method used in the narrative is the use of phrases to set up the
time of a certain incident. This certain technique has contributed in making the
element of time clear and concise. An excerpt below shows this kind of method:

(k) “During the incident, the complainant’s mother got

so mad… After almost two weeks, AAA went to the place of
her grandmother… During the confrontation, a certain
Belen complained…. When confronted about the incident
on May 12, 2000, AAA alleged that the accused touched her
short…”93

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The phrases are clearly used in order to establish the exact time of every incident.
This is effective especially that the element of time is significant in order to create
a cohesive narrative.

In terms of the line of reasoning with the narrative, there are several adverbials
that were used. An excerpt is presented below:

(l) “Arcillas’ being the common-law husband of BBB

at the time of the commission of the rape, even if
established during the trial, could not be appreciated
because the information did not specifically allege it as a
qualifying circumstance. Otherwise, he would be deprived
of his right to be informed of the charge lodged against
him” 94

The use of the adverbials is to connect two different ideas. Furthermore, the
function of the adverbial subordinate “even if” and the conjunctive adverbial
“otherwise” both were used to present a condition. These markers functions as
conditional adverbials.

4.2.3b Context

A legal narrative is evidently written in third person point of view, which is

apparent in its use of pronouns (he, she, it, they, etc) in order to address the
involved individual. This is illustrated in the following sentences:

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(m) “She felt pain after the incident.” 95

(n) “She was then brought to a hospital where she was

examined.” 96

(o) “She claimed that she filed the case against her
father because the latter had been maltreating her.”97

However, it is also noticed that there are parts of the narrative that deviate from its
consistency. An example of these instances is the presence of flashbacks as the
context of some parts of the narrative.

(p) “According to AAA, the appellant often pressed his

penis against her buttock when she was younger.” 98

(q) “She declared that the appellant first raped her

when she was in Grade II.” 99

(r) “The incident took place when she was in grade II

inside a hut in the mountain of Hihhid, Matnog,
Sorsogon.”100

We notice interruption and insertion of past events in the chronological sequence

of an event of the earlier occurrence. In sentence (a), where the scenario that the
appellant oftentimes pressed his penis against AAA's buttocks is given the context
of a part of AAA's past specifically when she was younger, therefore giving a
concrete background of the rape incident, making AAA as if reliving that part of
her past. Therefore, implies that AAA's recollection of the past abuses provides a
foregrounding of the entirety of the rape incident which empowers the narrative of

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G.R No 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
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the plaintiff, which if we try to look at is in anyway violent to the appellant. The
same thing goes for sentences b and c, which are all contextualized in the past.

In a narrative that is very specific and direct, it is quite difficult to detect certain
aspects of the narrative that deviate from its context. As the foregoing analyses
went, it can be easily inferred how the language of law operates in a strict and
rigid manner. Thus, the context of the narratives is significantly important to
analyze in order to understand whether or not the language of the law is consistent
or not with its context.

The repetition of the name of the subject is also salient. The contextualization is
definite in the instance where the repetition of the subject is observable such this
of the excerpt found below:

(s) “AAA was firm and unrelenting in pointing to

Tejero as the one who raped her on three occasions. AAA
knew Tejero very well as Tejero was cohabiting with BBB,
AAA’s mother, AAAs testimony was candid, spontaneous,
and consistent…”101

This method creates an emphasis and concentration with the context being talked
about. More specifically, the repetition of the same subject highlights the context
which in this case the consistency of the victim. Instead of using a pronoun to
signify the subject, the author specifically chose to repeat the subject on several
occasions which creates an effect of concentration within the context.

An observable manner of contextualization is the use of a premise to proving an

idea. Below is an excerpt of the use of such method:

(t) “… one way to commit rape is having carnal

knowledge of a woman using force or intimidation. Tejero

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 91

herein was able to have carnal knowledge of AAA thrice by

threatening to kill AAA and her family. Furthermore, Tejero
also exercised moral ascendancy over AAA since Tejero
was then cohabiting with BBB, AAAs mother, and AAA
considered Tejero as her stepfather. Such moral
ascendancy sufficiently qualifies as intimidation.”102

From the excerpt above, the first sentence was used as a general premise of the
preceding sentences. The followings sentences were then tailored to the premise
set and were presented in a cohesive manner through the use of the adverbial
“however”. Moreover, the last sentence acts as the conclusion of what was
discussed in the preceding sentences. We can infer how this manner becomes
consistent with the context of the narrative. Since the premise established the
general context, the following sentences then also contextualize the case with the
premise.

The context to which the narratives are formed is significant to establish in a

consistent and coherent way. It is important to assess the consistency of the
context found in the narratives.

(u) “According to accused-appellant, it was impossible

for him to have raped AAA in December 2000 since there
were other persons inside the bedroom. It was also
impossible for him to have raped AAA on March 14, 2002,
since there were many people around at that time, including
his wife, children, and AAA’s uncle.”103

In the excerpt above, the general context was established by the phrase
"according to". It is clearly an act of writing a reported speech. Furthermore, it can
be inferred that the context is the testimony of the appellant. The phrase

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"According to" is a manner of directly referring to the testimony of the accused.

The reference with the testimony is consistent through the use of the phrase "for
him" which also allows a direct reference to the accused. This phrase
contextualizes the presented testimony of the accused in a non-invasive manner as
it directly uses the accused as the reference.

Another instance where the consistency of the narratives can be inferred is

through the use of narrowing down a certain idea such that of the excerpt below:

(v) “…it was the trial court that heard the witnesses
and observed their deportment and manner of testifying
during the trial. In the case at bar specifically, the trial
court was in the best position to determine whether AAA’s
facial expressions and demeanor manifested a blithe
unconcern about the alleged injustice done to her, or
merely an effort to appear courteous to the judge and
lawyers.” 104

The first sentence in the excerpt above is the general statement or the basic
supposition. It was then followed by a sentence starting with a phrase that
attempts to narrow down the basic supposition. The use of the adverb
“specifically” generates a more concrete statement. Hence, the context of the
narrative was followed through the manner of narrowing down the statement with
the distinct situation of the specific case.

The entire narrative was written in a third person point of view and it is highly
unlikely to find inconsistency within the narratives because of how rigid and
stringent the form of writing is. However, in this part, the context will still be
discussed in order to support this claim.

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(w) “AAA then went out of their shanty and thought of

going back to her grandmother in Alimango, Cataingan,
Masbate. BBB prevented her from traveling to Cataingan
because it was almost midnight, and told her instead that
they would have to go to the said place together.” 105

The use of the pronoun “her” is to refer to the subject which is the victim. Within
three occurrences, it was used in a consistent way which pertains to the victim.
Moreover, through the use of this pronoun is consistent with the point of view
used in the narrative. Hence, this method is used to show the pieces of evidence in
a neutral way.

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4.3. NARRATOLOGY

In understanding narrative, according to Barthes (2000), is not merely to follow

the unfolding of the narrative, because most importantly it is also to recognized
the construction in a narrative is not merely to move from one word to the next,
but it is also to move from one level to the next level. As Booth (2000) puts it,
these are the forms the voices that the author can take to describe the event, and
the characters in the event.
4.3.1a VOICE

One of the aspects of analysis in narratology is the voice. Barry (2005), defines
this as the category that comments on narrators, and the choice of grammatical
elements.

Voice, in this context, simply refers to the one who is speaking in the narrative.
Within the context of the corpus, it can be inferred that the Supreme Court, as the
representation of the highest judicial body that enacts the law of the land, is the
one speaking in the narrative. Rather than representing the individual justices, the
reference made is usually a representation of a whole entity not the sum of its part.
This is observable through the use of the following;

(a) This Court 1

(b) We disagree 2
(c) We have also repeatedly held that3
(d) We concur with CA…4
(e) As the court… 5

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(f) … the court 6

(g) The Court finds no reason herein (GR No.
187744, 5)
(h) … this jurisdiction 7

The use of the noun phrase and pronouns mentioned above strongly denotes the
voice in the narrative. The noun phrase “this court” was used to refer the
Supreme Court as an entity. Specifically, the definite article “this” gives an
emphasis with how it indicates the following noun, which in this case, the “court”.
Similarly, the use of the determiner “the” strengthens the noun following it sends
a sense of formality. In addition, the use of the pronoun “we” is used to substitute
the phrase “the court” which, semantically speaking, used to represent a certain
group of people. More specifically, it represents the justices that the court is
composed of.

From the use of these articles, the voice can be specifically inferred. More than
just identifying the voice, it is also important to identify the manner in which the
narrative has been unfolding and how the narrative is portrayed by the author. As
the goal of this analysis is to identify how the narrative is being told. Through this,
the attitude of the author can be easily drawn.

As foreshadowed in the stylistic analysis, the narrative of both the accused and the
appellant is being told in a reported manner. These can be inferred through the use
of indirect speech structures such as the following:

(a) According to.. 8

6
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Poras
7
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Poras
8
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Poras
 96

(b) He said that… 9

(c) The accused recounted that… 10
(d) … claimed that… 11
(e) … testified that… 12
(f) She admitted that… 13
(g) … clarified that… 14

As observed from the excerpt above, the most common structure of reporting a
certain narrative is through the use of that-clauses. Specifically, the use of this
clause is to report a certain narrative in an indirect manner. Furthermore, the
narrative is written in a full indirect speech as shown in the excerpts below:

(h) “Accused-appellant further argues that AAA’s

testimony that she was raped sometime in December
2000 is incredible considering the size of the sleeping
area where the act supposedly occurred.”15
(i) “CCC testified that he is the father of BBB, the latter
being the mother of AAA ad wife of accused-
appellant.”16
(j) “AAA further testified that she did not immediately tell
her mother, BBB, about the incident…”17

9
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Poras
10
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Poras
11
GR No. 181491, People of the Philippines v Arcillas
12
GR No. 181491, People of the Philippine v Arcillas
13
GR No. 187734, People of the Philippine v Agaton
14
GR No. 187734, People of the Philippine v Agaton
15
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippine v Agaton
16
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippine v Agaton
17
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippine v Agaton
 97

(k) “Tejero insists that he was plying a jeepney on the days

when AAA was raped…” 18
(l) “He insisted that he merely touched her body during a
moment of intoxication.”19

From the excerpt above and most of the narratives are written in a full indirect
report. In fact, using the quotation to refer a certain statement is quite unusual and
is only used on several occasions. The used of a full indirect report is to indirectly
refer the pieces of information that certain individuals contributed to form the
narrative. Moreover, through this structure and through the use of that-clause, it
allows the author to distant himself by not invading the reported material. More
specifically, it allows the narratives of both parties to be freely seen as neutral
statements by indirectly reporting them. These inferences would yield towards
the attitude and the treatment of the “voice” or the speaker within the discourse.
The type of reporting used in the discourse is distant and neutral in a way that
there are no direct quotation structures used by the narrator.

However, there are also instances wherein the narrator deviates from this
neutrality. This inconsistency can be difficult to find especially if the sole basis is
through the grammatical structure. In hence, it is also significant to observe the
context of the discourse. Seemingly, According to Barry (2002), a narrator that is
neutral and transparent is distant with himself and attempts to hide any form of
social factor or interest that is connected to his identity. Barry (2002) simply
denotes that this neutral author is simply authorial in the manner of narrating the
story. With this argumentation, the voice or the narrator in the discourse being
studied failed to keep the essence of neutrality through the following excerpts:

18
GR. No. 187744, People of the Philippine v Tejero
19
GR. No. 181491, People of the Philippine v Arcillas
 98

(m) “It is well entrenched in this jurisdiction that when the

offended parties are young and immature girls, as in
this case, courts are inclined to lend credence to their
version of what transpired, considering not only their
relative vulnerability but also the shame and
embarrassment to which they would be exposed."20

It can be clearly inferred how the voice failed to remain his neutrality and
has, in fact, shown that there is an existing bias that the narrator, which is the
court, in this case, is upholding. Furthermore, this presupposed that the author has
already a set of beliefs that they must in act in a certain scenario. This reveals that
the author, to some extent, pre-existing interests.

Another instance of inconsistency is shown in the following excerpt:

(n) “… the trial court is in the best position to determine

whether AAA’s facial expression and demeanor
manifested a blithe unconcern about the alleged
injustice done to her, or merely an effort to appear
courteous to the judge and lawyers.” 21
(o) “The trial judged was placed in the unique position to
discern whether she was telling the truth or inventing it
after having personally observed AAA’s conduct and
demeanor as a witness.”22

These statements simply presupposed that there are certain manners in which a
victim of rape must act. These statements, to some extent, expose the perception
of the author with regards to the specific act and demeanor of a victim.

20
GR No. 187744, People of the Philippines v Tejero
21
GR. No. 187734, People of the Philippines v Tejero
22
GR No. 181491, People of the Philippines v Arcillas
 99

Furthermore, this reveals that there is an existing threshold of standards of

demeanor that is believed to be important by the author. Consequently, this would
reveal that the author, similar to the previous analysis, has a pre-existing standard
which would lead to the interest and beliefs of the court.

Although the manner in which the narratives were presented in a neutral and
detach structure, the minor inconsistencies would yield to the characteristic of the
voice or the narrator in the discourse. As presented above, these inconsistencies lie
with the fact that there are pre-existing notions that identify the beliefs, interest,
and attitude of the narrator, which in this case the Supreme Court. According to
Barry (2002), this certain type of narrator may have the likelihood to be intrusive
and overt within the discourses. It is also important to note that whether this type
of inconsistency ought to be identified as wrong or right, is already on a different
subject matter.

4.3.1b FOCALIZATION
The second aspect is focalization, which is mainly concerned with the regulation
of narrative information, how are the action and speech is told as well as the
selection and restriction of the information conveyed in the narrative. Therefore, it
is the restriction of everything from the way we are served the information and
events, nuances of voices of characters in the narrative (Jahn, 2005).

Gennette in 2000 made a distinction of the three possibilities of focalization

according to the degrees of restrictions of narrative information.

The first is the external focalization, by which according to Barry (2009), is the
viewpoint that is outside the character, where we could only hear and see things in
the narrative just as if we were part of the scene.
 100

(A) “The appellant claimed that in the evening ...” 23

(B) “She narrated to her mother and aunt what had
happened.” 24
(C) “…She was home, together with her two younger
brothers.”25
(D) “She was then living with appellant..”26
(E) “AAA further testified that she slept at the sala of the
house.”27
(F) “He was in Negros when BBB informed him.” 28

As observed, the use of pronouns she, he and the nouns appellant and AAA is very
evident which implies they are all stated in third person point of view that suggest
detachment of the narrator from the events and of the characters in the narrative.
But this is not always true to all statements in third person point of view, it can be
observed that the second possibility of focalization, internal focalization, when the
events are presented from the point of perception and cognition of a particular
character in the narrative, so we can have an access to the character’s mind,
feeling, emotion and inner reactions in certain parts of the narrative can also occur
in external focalization. This is illustrated in the following sentences:
(G) “She felt pain after that.” 29
(H) “she could not ask for help […] because of her fear...” 30

23
G.R No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
24
G.R No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
25
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
26
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
27
G.R No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
28
G.R No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
29
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
30
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
 101

(I) “...she was afraid of her father who was holding a

31
bolo.”
(J) “...they charged the appellant with grave offenses
because they were mad at him.” 32
(K) “He was therefore surprised when two policemen
arrested him...” 33
(L) “AAA felt pain in her private parts.”
(M) “She felt weak.” 34
(N) “She was certain that the appellant had raped
35
her...”
(O) “She was certain that the appellant had raped
36
her...”
The excerpt above are all evidently told in third person point of view or external
focalization which is basically just reporting what is visible in the third person
point of view, because of the use of pronouns and the nouns but at the same time
the information told in third person point of view can also be inferred to be
delivered from the characters point of view or internal focalisation because we can
also read about their inner reactions, thoughts, and emotions. As in the sentence
(a), although it used pronoun she to emphasize that it is in third person point of
view, we also can read about her feeling pain, or in the sentence (e) even when he
implies it is in third person point of view, it also seem as though it is in first
person point of view because we can read about him surprised by the policemen
arresting him and lastly in sentence (c), where we can be aware that she is afraid

31
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
32
G.R No. 188851, People of the Philippines v Dollano
33
G.R No. 186469, People of the Philippines v Dela Fuente
34
G.R No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
35
G.R No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
36
G.R No. 177747, People of the Philippines v Poras
 102

at the moment when her father is holding a bolo, thus through internal focalisation
we are able to know how these characters feel at the moment.
Barry (2009), explains that the main character who perceives most is called as the
focaliser of the narrative. Therefore, in this case, because we access the inner
emotions of the character and know how do they feel about certain events in the
narrative, we can infer that the focaliser is not necessarily the court or even the
rape incident itself but are the characters (plaintiff and appellant) involved just as
in instances when the excerpts, she, he, they, or AAA refers to the characters in the
narrative.
There is another possibility of focalisation, termed by Barry as zero focalisation or
non-focalisation, Jan (2005), asserts that the events expressed in this possibility
are wholly unrestricted or in omniscient point of view, this possibility of
focalisation does not exist in this rape narratives because the point of views used
in the narratives are all limited to a particular extent. Zero focalisation is used with
a not-intrusive, non-dramatised and effaced narrating of an event, which is not the
case in the rape cases analyzed.
In totality, focalization, as Jahn (2005), puts it, is it covers different means of
regulating, selecting and channeling narrative information, particularly of seeing
events from the characters or the narrator's (court) point of view.

Furthermore, the use of a certain type/possibility of focalization can anyhow

impose limits to what can be revealed and written about an event or a certain
character in the narrative. This limitation then dictates what can we read about and
what does the focalizer does not see. Therefore, this signifies that focalization and
the narrative mode voice work in a way that directly affects the text/narrative in
terms of how it is going to be understood and how is it told. Through the use of
these two, negotiations in the language of law happen thus gradually changing the
narrative of the rape case itself to a narrative of the law.
 103

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter discusses the summary of the research which includes the research
objectives, its methodology and the salient results of the study. The conclusions
that could be drawn from the results as well the recommendations to further
expand and enhance the study will also be discussed in this chapter.

5.1 SUMMARY

5.1.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY

This study primarily aims to identify the narrative structure and how they may
yield to forms of violence. The primary focus of the study is the Decision text of
rape cases made by the Supreme Court. This study specifically analysis the
language of the law that reflects the Supreme Court.

The method and theory used are both Stylistic and Narratology which focuses on
the grammatical and narrative structure of the discourse. The stylistic method
suggested by Halliday focuses on the style of the text specifically on the
lexicalization, sentence complexity and the Context and Coherence. On the other
hand, Narratology mainly focuses on the two concepts suggested by Genette
(1980) which are Focalisation and Voice.

5.1.2 SUMMARY OF RESULTS

Research Question no. 1: What linguistic features indicate violence?

The analysis of the stylistic features and structures of the narratives resulted in
the linguistic features that indicate violence. Through the use of the stylistic
 104

method, the linguistic features that indicate violence are the lexical and the
sentence complexity. The lexicalization reveals how the choice of words
creates a sense of exclusion between the appellant and the victim and
translates into downplaying some experience. More specifically, lexicons such
as "manyakis" reveal intensification while words such as "lend", "well-
entrenched" suggests pre-existing interests and beliefs that the court has.
Furthermore, this lexicalization yield to identifying the pre-existing interests
that the law currently has. On the other hand, the sentence complexity
uncovers how the structures represent these forms of violence.

Research Question no. 2: What are the forms of violence revealed in rape
narratives?

There are several forms of violence reveals in rape narratives.

Although there are several forms of violence, the most prominent type of
violence revealed is a covert form of violence. More specifically, this form
of violence is subtle and remote which may be difficult to recognize in the
first reading. Biased is the first type of covert violence. The analysis of the
stylistic structure reveals that there are existing prejudice and biases in
terms of the age and credibility of the victim. For instance, when rape
victims are young, the court believes that they are less likely to
manufacture evidence. Moreover, because of the stigma that rape victims
undergo, they are less likely concoct lies within the jurisdiction of the
court.

Secondly, double-standard is also identified as a present covert

violence in the rape narratives. This violence was found to be present in
 105

the entire corpus analyzed. Specifically, this double standard exists when
the court argues that there are a certain mannerism and demeanor that
proves the authenticity and credibility of the rape victim. Moreover, this is
dangerous because of the use of "personal" judgment awarded to the trial
court.
Thirdly, the use of ellipsis, which is the manner of leaving out given
information that is supposedly part of the narratives of either the plaintiff
or the appellant. This is present in the cases analyzed, where the court has
set standards and rules on which a particular information/narrative is
relevant and important in the case. Moreover, it is in the instances where
the court can decide whether or not a particular inconsistency apparent in
the narrative of either the plaintiff or appellant should be taken account.
This is a manifestation of the language of law can be violent in ways we
cannot feel, because supposedly, given that it is revealed and given by the
individual involved no matter how nonsense and minor it is, it should be
taken account and it should be considered, straying from this, is a way of
turning the narrative of the plaintiff/appellant to a narrative of the
law/court.
Fourthly, downplaying or downranking of information. This is very
apparent in the diction used in the narratives, where a particular
information or part of the narrative is downplayed with the use of adverbs
such as ‘just, only', attaching these adverbs to describe the experience and
the struggle of either the appellant and the plaintiff, weakens their
narrative as a whole. This is very apparent in the way the court describes
the rape incident itself. This is dangerous in ways that it can change the
intention and the struggles in the narrative into something ordinary.
 106

Although these forms of violence resulted towards the

understanding of how the law operates, it is also important to note that
violence may not necessarily equate to what is considered to be morally
right of wrong. This issue may also be another field of research that can be
dwelled in.

Research Question no. 3: How do narrative structures perpetuate the language

violence in law?

In the course of the narrative structure analysis, it is important to note that

the language of the law is very rigid and stringent. More specifically, the
manner of reporting the individual narratives is in a full indirect reporting
which positions the voice or the narrator in a distant perspective.
However, the author failed to maintain the neutrality due to the embedded
revelation of the interests and the treatment of the court. But because of
how these structures are well-written, it is quite difficult to locate these
forms of violence unless there is a deep analysis of the grammatical
structure used. Hence, the structure of narrative easily perpetuates these
forms of violence because of how embedded and deeply entrenched it is in
a ‘neutral' and ‘distant' language.

Research Question no. 4: What are the implications of the embedded

representation of violence in the language of the law to the society?

In the course of the several analyses done, it yielded to several

implications of what is the nature of the language of the law. Primarily,
these embedded representations of violence represent that there are pre-
existing interests and beliefs when it comes to rape cases that the law and
its legal practitioner uphold. These pre-existing interests and beliefs are
 107

usually employed and used in raped cases that may affect the entire case.
More specifically, these forms of violence may hurt and, somehow, be
unfair to other parties within the narrative.
Another important inference that is found during the course of analysis is
how the court sees rape in general. Specifically, the court sees rape as the
heavily rigorous circumstance where rape victims undergo an extreme
degree of stigmatization and subjugation. These results yielded to a new
definition of how rape is seen:
“More than a physical assault, rape follows an
internal assault on the dignity of the affected party
through the constant stigmatization, subjugation
and degradation of a person’s honor transcended
through the use of language

5.2 CONCLUSION:

In a language that attempts to be objective and distant, it is quite difficult to

distinguish whether there is a form of violence committed by the Supreme Court.
Clearly, the structure and style of the language of the law are clear and concise
which aims to present facts and information in a disambiguate manner. Moreover,
the language of the law is long in length with series of embedded phrase and
clauses which support the language's coherence. However, forms of covert
violence lie behind the lexical features in the narrative. These forms of violence
disclose the pre-existing beliefs and interest that Supreme Court and the law
upholds. More specifically, this covert violence may hurt existing individuals
within the discourse.
 108

More importantly, the study sheds a light on how Supreme Court and the law
perceive Rape in general. Clearly, the Supreme Court considers rape as an
extreme assault on an individual. Specifically, the court sees not only the acts of
injustice during the act of rape but they also foresee the series of injustices that
may happen to both individuals involved in the act especially, the assaulted
person. The result of these analyses raises and issue on the construct of the world
in-laws image and how legal language constantly negotiate the existing narratives
within legal discourses.

5.3 RECOMMENDATIONS:

The stylistic and narratology methods used to examine evidence of embedded

violence in rape narratives in the Philippines brought answer to the questions
which is concern mainly on whether or not there is violence in the language of the
law on how it treats rape as a whole. This study focused on first, the stylistic
description of violence through lexicalization, grammatical categories and context
and cohesion but secondly, it also explored the narratological aspect of the
narratives specifically voice and focalization, this study strongly recommends the
use of the same methods to explore and analyze other narratives of criminal cases
such as murder, genocide, treason, and even robbery and theft. Moreover, this
study also recommends the use of stylistic method in analyzing oral discourse in
the language of law such as Cross – examinations or depositions to be able to
examine whether or not the language used in these kinds of discourses inflict
violence towards the plaintiff or the appellant.

In the aspect of discussing violence in the language of the law, the study can also
be used as foundation for future researches of categorizing the different forms of
violence present in the language of law.
 109

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