Trial Language
Differential discourse processing and discursive formation
Author
This study of Anglo-American legal discourse is the first comprehensive discourse analysis of American legal language in its prototypical setting, the trial by jury. With ethnographic data gathered in a civil jury trial, the book compares the discourse processing of the legal participants and the lay jurors in the trial.This study, examining an entire trial, finds that it is constraints at the level of a Foucauldian discursive formation that prevent lay understanding. Those constraints include the allocation of narrative speaking roles primarily to legal speakers in genres in which no sworn evidence is given, the suppression of narrative in ordinary witnesses, a set of restraints on witnesses' use of certain categories of evidentials, the legal topic originating in textual authority unknown to the lay participants, specific distribution of verb forms by legal genre, and a linguistic “burden” accompanying the legal “burden of proof” in the requirement that the lawyer of the moving party also use and explain technical legal terms to the jury at the same time as he or she presents evidence. All of these factors contribute to the incomprehensibility of legal discourse to lay auditors, resulting in the jury making their decision based on a commonsense script of the events precipitating the trial.The study concludes by arguing for a Foucauldian discourse analysis of institutional languages, a social theory powerful enough to account for the power and tenacity of these languages, where traditional linguistic explanation has failed.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 26] 1994. xii, 226 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments | p. vi
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Abbreviations | p. xi
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Legal Language, Discourse Analysis and Social Theory | p. 1
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From Text to Tallk: Juror Qualification Rites in an Indiana Court | p. 45
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Text in Talk: Preliminary instructions and opening statements | p. 81
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Stories by question and answer: The Evidence Stage | p. 117
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Last Word: Final Argument and Instructions | p. 155
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Legal Discourse and Discursive Formations | p. 191
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Notes | p. 215
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Index | p. 225
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2021. Making death (in)different: discursive legitimation in death trials. Social Semiotics ► pp. 1 ff.
2021. “Let’s kill him”: self-reference pronouns and speaking roles in capital trials. Social Semiotics 31:4 ► pp. 585 ff.
Cheng, Le
2011. Administration of Justice and Multimodality in Media: Semiotic Translation, Conflict and Compatibility. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 24:4 ► pp. 491 ff.
Cotterill, Janet
2002. ‘Just One More Time …’: Aspects of Intertextuality in the Trials of O. J. Simpson. In Language in the Legal Process, ► pp. 147 ff.
2012. Corpus Analysis In Forensic Linguistics. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Daly, Ellen
2022. Making new meanings: The entextualisation of digital communications evidence in English sexual offences trials. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 18:4 ► pp. 578 ff.
Farkas, Kerrie RH
2013. Power and access in the public hearings of city council meetings. Discourse & Society 24:4 ► pp. 399 ff.
Gaines, Phil
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Grund, Peter J.
2012. The Nature of Knowledge: Evidence and Evidentiality in the Witness Depositions from the Salem Witch Trials. American Speech 87:1 ► pp. 7 ff.
HARRIS, SANDRA
2001. Fragmented Narratives and Multiple Tellers: Witness and Defendant Accounts in Trials. Discourse Studies 3:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Heffer, Chris
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Hobbs, Pamela
2008. Discourse in the Law. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication,
2012. Discourse in the Law. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication,
Hu, Pi-chan
2018. An investigation of interruption in courtroom discourse
. International Journal of Legal Discourse 3:2 ► pp. 213 ff.
Hájek, Martin, Martin Havlík & Jiří Nekvapil
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2009. How Courts Know. Space and Culture 12:2 ► pp. 183 ff.
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2005. Discourse Analysis in the Legal Context. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 437 ff.
2007. Language in the American Courtroom. Language and Linguistics Compass 1:1-2 ► pp. 100 ff.
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STYGALL, GAIL
2001. A Different Class of Witnesses: Experts in the Courtroom. Discourse Studies 3:3 ► pp. 327 ff.
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2021. Police interview of suspects in China: Developments and analyses. International Journal of Police Science & Management 23:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
[no author supplied]
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General