going, it touches you or it moves you. This obviously happens in literary
works whose purpose is to take a reader on an emotional journey. It is,
however, done to some extent in technical writing, although it is not essential
for that task.
Like information, emotion is conveyed by words. This may be achieved in
several ways. It can be done directly by using appropriate adjectives and
adverbs, although the direct approach is generally not the best. It can be done
less directly by a number of means such as choosing words with an
appropriate connotation, through understatement, by approaching a topic from
a different or unusual perspective, or by using imagery such as metaphor and
simile.
Typically a straight description of the law in an area will not have, and usually
does not need, much emotional content to convey its message. But even here
there are exceptions, since some topics are naturally more emotionally laden
than others. For example, a textbook on human rights will likely convey the
profound commitment that our culture has towards rights, and the suffering
inflicted when those rights are greatly abused. Consequently, judgments in
these areas are more likely to arouse emotion. For example, a judgment
sentencing a criminal for a particularly vicious crime can scarcely avoid
emotional content. There is natural outrage when one person inflicts violence
on another.
A classic example of emotional legal writing comes from the Mabo Case,
where the High Court of Australia found, contrary to then current opinion, that
at common law the aboriginal natives had a legal claim to their tribal land.
There, Justices Deane and Gaudron described the fate of Australian aborigines
following arrival of the white man in 1788 and their subsequent conquest. They
called it a “conflagration of oppression and conflict which was, over the
following century, to spread across the continent to dispossess, degrade and
devastate the Aboriginal people and leave a national legacy of unutterable
shame. This dispossession was the darkest aspect of the history of this nation.
The nation as a whole must remain diminished unless and until there is
acknowledgment of, and a retreat from, those past influences”.
10
Persuasion
In 2004 Barrack
Obama made his keynote speech to the Democratic
Convention. It was “an elegant narrative, its simple rhetoric quite sublime”.
On Wednesday 5 November 2008 Barrack Obama delivered his victory
speech, having just won the vote to become the 44th President of the United
States. This speech “had the same power, delivered with the same
___________________
10
Mabo v Queensland (1986) 64 ALR 1, 83 ALR 14, (1992) 107 ALR 1
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