An Analysis of Strategies for Framing the Petition in Kenya’s Contested 2022 Presidential Election

This study investigated the linguistic strategies used by advocates to frame arguments during the pretrial conference in Kenya’s 2022 Presidential Election Petition (hereafter, PEP). A pretrial conference is a judicial meeting held before the commencement of a trial to address procedural and administrative matters that promote the fair and efficient conduct of proceedings. During this stage, the presiding judge and the parties, usually through their advocates, clarify issues in dispute, determine the admissibility of evidence, and set timelines for filing submissions. The study adopted a case study, a qualitative research methodology. Sixteen excerpts from oral submissions made by petitioning advocates during the pretrial conference were purposively sampled and analysed using Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional CDA model, which integrates textual, discursive, and social dimensions of language use. The study revealed that the petitioning advocates used passive constructions, nominalisation, negative constructions, formal legal lexicon, evaluative bundling, evaluative language, visual metaphors, causal connectors, narrative framing, chronological precision, deontic modality, modal deferral, legal intertextuality, institutional naming, universal quantification, repetition, modality, inclusive pronoun usage, and honorific forms of address to articulate dissent, negotiate legitimacy, and question institutional authority. It is anticipated that this study will contribute to the existing literature on courtroom discourse within the CDA framework.