Conversational moves in cross-examination

by JLS
for the GC

An abstract from:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/tv577616433810q2/

Saul Kassin, L. Williams, & C. Saunders,
"Dirty tricks of cross-examination: the influence of conjectural evidence on the jury"

Journal Law and Human Behavior, volume 14

Abstract

"A mock jury study was conducted to test

the hypothesis that perceptions of a witness can

be biased by presumptuous cross-examination questions."

---

"A total of 105 subjects read a rape trial in which

the cross-examiner asked a question that implied

something negative about the reputation of either the victim or an expert."


---- i.e. strictly, "implicated" rather than "entailed".

"Within each condition, the question was met with either a denial, an

admission, or an objection from the witness's attorney."

---

"Results indicated that although ratings of the victim's credibility were not affected by the presumptuous question, the expert's credibility was significantly diminished -- even when the question had elicited a denial or a sustained objection."

"Conceptual and practical implications of these findings are discussed."

---- The only real conceptual 'implicature' that troubles me presently is why Grice cared to mention "cross-examination" as a secondary range of cases to meet any alleged challenge to his cooperative principle and attendant maxims not being "universal" in his -- and I should say my -- sense (of things).

Personally, I discussed variation on the application of a Kantian canon of rationality to different "Hegelian" (actual) historical variances as yet another "cunning" of reason -- in this case, the cunning of conversational reason.