Trial Language : Differential discourse processing and discursive formation.
Title:
Trial Language : Differential discourse processing and discursive formation.
Author:
Stygall, Gail.
ISBN:
9789027282842
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (238 pages)
Series:
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series
Contents:
TRIAL LANGUAGE DIFFERENTIAL DISCOURSE PROCESSING AND DISCURSIVE FORMATION -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgments -- Table of contents -- FIGURES AND TABLES -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER 1. LEGAL LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, ANDSOCIAL THEORY -- Research on Legal Language -- Studies in Legal Language-As-Object -- Studies in Legal Language-As-Process -- Studies in Legal Language-as-Instrument -- Social Theory and Methodology -- The Study, Methods, and Findings -- Questions of Representation -- CHAPTER 2. FROM TEXT TO TALK: JUROR QUALIFICATION RITES IN AN INDIANA COURT -- The Setting, the Case, and the Participants -- The Setting -- The Case and the Participants -- Legal Genre, Legal Order -- Control, Conversation, and "Examination" -- Jury Questioning in a Critical Frame -- CHAPTER 3. TEXT IN TALK: PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONSAND OPENING STATEMENTS -- Reducing the Facts to Law -- The Law-Facts Distinction: Leaving the Legal Discourse Topic Outside the Courtroom -- Genre Differences -- Metacommentary on the Discourse and Topic Shift -- Metacommentary -- Topic Shift and Bracketing -- Before the Evidence Begins -- CHAPTER 4. STORIES BY QUESTION AND ANSWER: THE EVIDENCE STAGE -- Legal Coherence and Narrative Sequence -- The Accident-MOP -- Notwithstanding the Evidence -- Evidentials -- The Form of the Question -- The View from the Legal Community -- The Jury's Views -- CHAPTER 5. LAST WORDS: FINAL ARGUMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS -- The Persuasion of Rapport -- Genre Differences I: The Appearance of Historical Present and Narrative -- The Appearance of Historical Present Tense -- HP in Narrative Sequences -- Genre Differences II: The Return of the Hearsay Evidential -- Dividing the World: Pronoun Use in Final Argument -- Final Instructions -- CHAPTER 6. LEGAL DISCOURSE AND DISCURSIVE FORMATIONS.
An Analysis of the Law's Discursive Practices -- Access to Legal Discourse -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX.
Abstract:
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.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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