Meaning of Allocution | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A formal speech, especially one which is regarded as authoritative and forceful.
   countable, uncountable
2. The question put to a convicted defendant by a judge after the rendering of the verdict in a trial, in which the defendant is asked whether he or she wishes to make a statement to the court before sentencing; the statement made by a defendant in response to such a question; the legal right of a defendant to make such a statement.
   US, countable, uncountable
3. The legal right of a victim, in some jurisdictions, to make a statement to a court prior to sentencing of a defendant convicted of a crime causing injury to that victim; the actual statement made to a court by a victim.
   US, countable, uncountable
4. A pronouncement by a pope to an assembly of church officials concerning a matter of church policy.
   countable, uncountable
5. The mode of information dissemination in which media broadcasts are transmitted to multiple receivers with no or very limited capability of a two-way exchange of information.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“The Minister of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the officers of the artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had declared the national honour sold to foreigners.”

“The term "allocution" refers to the personal right of a defendant to make a statement on his own behalf in an attempt to affect sentencing. . . . The word "allocution" is also frequently used . . . to describe the statement made by a defendant during a guilty plea proceeding.”

“As of July, 1985, 19 states permitted victim allocution at the sentencing phase of criminal trials.”

“The recent papal allocution To the International Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas has been the occasion for much discussion concerning the use of artificial feeding tubes for nutrition and hydration.”

“Allocution is the dissemination of information by a central unit towards a collectivity of decentral units, the central unit being both the source and the determining actor.”

“Bordewijk and van Kaam describe the one-to-many architecture of modern broadcast mass media as ‘allocution’. This is the least responsive type of interactivity because it is not designed to support exchanges. . . . The one-way flow of information is under the programmatic control of the media service provider.”

CEFR level