Trial Language

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.

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.

Drawing on representative corpora of transcripts from over 100 English criminal jury trials, this stimulating new book explores the nature of 'legal-lay discourse', or the language used by legal professionals before lay juries. Careful analyses of genres such as witness examination and the judge's summing-up reveal a strategic tension between a desire to persuade the jury and the need to conform to legal constraints. The book also suggests ways of managing this tension linguistically to help, not hinder, the jury.

This book looks at the forces that have made traditional legal language what it is today and suggests some reasoms why the law needs plain English. It also shows why most of its peculiarities are unnecessary.

What do you do when your father becomes the enemy of your family? Danny McMillan never knew that his father was abusing his mother, until a night of violence that shattered his family forever. Watching in the courtroom as his father is sentenced, Danny struggles with divided loyalties -- to his mother on one side and to his father whom he wants to forgive on the other. After one trial is over, another begins for Danny. Social services and the police convince Danny's mother that they must go into a victim protection program. Danny is asked to leave everything behind -- his home, his friends, and the love and support of his grandparents. In a new city and attending a new school, Danny is even given a new name -- David Mayer. But who is David? He is someone that Danny does not want to be, living a life he cannot accept. As David, he is pushing boundaries he never would have pushed.

Matoesian uses the notorious 1991 rape trial of William Kennedy Smith to provide an indepth analysis of language use and its role in that trial and the law more generally.

A definitive textbook for students in speech-language pathology, audiology, and communication sciences and disorders, Principles and Practices in Augmentative and Alternative Communication offers students an introduction to augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and prepares them for working with clients with complex communication needs. Editors Drs. Donald R. Fuller and Lyle L. Lloyd and their contributors provide a foundation for the development of assessment and intervention procedures and practices within the framework of the communication model and its major components: the means to represent, the means to select, and the means to transmit. Principles and Practices in Augmentative and Alternative Communication consists of five major units: An introduction to AAC, from its history to current practice An overview of AAC symbols and a comprehensive discussion of aided and unaided symbols A review of AAC technology The components of AAC assessment: principles, vocabulary, symbol selection, and the prescription of AAC technology AAC intervention: everything from the components of the intervention process to examples from specific cases and settings Included with the text are online supplemental materials for faculty use in the classroom. Students and professionals looking for a foundational textbook in the field of AAC will find Principles and Practices in Augmentative and Alternative Communication to be effective, contemporary, and practical.