Abstract

Our objective is to determine the variation in the use of author’s stance strategies in the legal genre suit’s reply (SR), according to the writer education degree. Based on qualitative research, we analyzed a corpus composed of 14 SR: 7 produced by law students and 7 by professional lawyers. The analysis was carried out by an interdisciplinary team, with the support of the Atlas.ti software (v.7.5.18). Besides, it was subjected to various validation procedures that were successfully completed. Among the main results, we highlight the contribution of a specific model for the description of the author’s position in the SR genre. In addition, we discovered that it is the SR produced by lawyers display the greatest variety and number of stance strategies. In conclusion, the production of SR can be conceived as a set of strategic interactions in which the subjects deploy stance strategies with different purposes.