Law and Discourse on Anarchist Activism: the Municipal Court in Prague

Abstract

In April 2016, the Municipal Court in Prague sentenced Igor Shevtsov, a student anarchist activist of Russian origin, to two years of expulsion from the territory of the Czech Republic, for the crime of supporting others in spraying anarchist slogans onto a prison wall. Using this case, I analyse the discursive construction of the identity of ‘the accused’ in the criminal proceedings of this particular case. The analysis of the court judgement and the related texts (courtroom speeches and media coverage) is conducted from the viewpoint of the disciplines of linguistics (critical discourse analysis) and law (socio-legal research). I work within the framework of the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl and Wodak 2009: 87-121) and identify the nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivation/framing, and intensification/mitigation strategies (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 31-90) employed by the prosecution, the judge and the defence. These include, for instance, references to Igor Shevtsov as ‘the accused’ or ‘the guilty’ and the topoi (and fallacies) of recidivism or utilitarianism. It is concluded that the sentence might have been influenced by another (unproven) accusation dealt with by the court: Shevtsov was also suspected of throwing a Molotov onto the family house of the Czech Minister of Defence. The court’s simultaneous dealing with the more serious charge discursively reinforced the construction of Shevtsov’s identity as a criminal, probably ‘guilty’ of a terrorist attack.