DefinePK

Abstract

The study centers on the SystematicFunctional Linguistics (SFL) Analysis of alegal document, namely, The Panama CaseJudgement, officially released on thePakistan Supreme Court website. As therewas a lack of literature on the linguisticanalysis of legal documents in Pakistan, thispaper aimed to give a thorough analysis ofthe indictment of a former prime minister.The paper made use of the articulatedjudgement by the court and explored thepatterns of language in relation to power inlegal discourses. The paper explored thatverbal category has used different modes ofspeech such as; commanding, stating orasking. It also showed that this process wasused mostly by the Court itself. Thishighlighted the significance of the stancetaken by the Court throughout the wholejudgment, where no external factor madeany effect on the outcome or the result. Thepaper highlighted how linguistic analyses ofthe legal document can represent the trueideology of the judgement to the reader.