Gandhi. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.Avowalfunction: declaration · orientation: reality · motive: undetermined · scope: wide · target: reflexive The speaker publicly constitutes a position as a citizen accepting punishment while disputing its moral meaning. An alternative function is commissive: an undertaking to accept the penalty. The words make that undertaking available; they do not independently verify cheerfulness or private conviction.
Gandhi. The only course open to you, the Judge, is either to resign your post and thus dissociate yourself from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent; or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the public weal.Frame-setfunction: declaration · orientation: reality · motive: undetermined · scope: wide · target: meta The speaker frames sentencing as a choice that also discloses the judge’s moral position. Those are the alternatives the speaker presents; the annotation does not establish that they exhaust the judge’s legal or moral options.
COURT: Mr. Banker, do you wish to say anything to the Court as regards the sentences?Questionfunction: directive · orientation: reality · motive: undetermined · scope: narrow · target: outward The court proceeds to invite the other defendant’s statement. This procedural next turn is observable. It neither accepts nor explicitly refutes Gandhi’s proposed moral frame.
MR. BANKER: I only want to say that I had the privilege of printing these articles and I plead guilty to the charge. I have got nothing to say as regards the sentence.Declarationfunction: declaration · orientation: reality · motive: undetermined · scope: narrow · target: outward The defendant enters a plea and declines further comment on sentencing. Calling the publication a privilege also expresses affiliation with the activity, so the paragraph can carry expressive force alongside its procedural act.
The divergences
The first passage can be read as Avowal, constituting a civic identity, and as Promise, undertaking acceptance of punishment. They differ on function and target. These readings can coexist; subsequent conduct could support the undertaking without proving an inward state.
Gandhi proposes that sentencing must express a judgment about the moral standing of the system. The court’s next question continues the sentencing procedure. They operate on different targets: the legitimacy of the frame and the next act within it. The excerpt documents that sequence but does not reveal the judge’s private response.
Banker’s plea has a procedural function, while privilege expresses a positive relationship to the publication. A narrow filing follows the legal act; a wider filing includes the public expression of commitment. Neither licenses a confident claim about an undisclosed motive.