by JLS
for the GC
An abstract from:
http://www.iula.upf.edu/agenda/iafl_bcn_06/iafl03uk.htm
Phill Newbury,
"A Pragmatic Account of Lawyers' Cross-Examination Questions"
Abstract:
"J. M. Atkinson and Paul Drew ("Order in court", 1979) have observed that,
during cross-examination, the witness is sometimes able to infer
that the lawyer is implicitly criticising them or their
direct-examination testimony."
"Drew (1990, 1992) explores this phenomenon further, noting some of the linguistic ways lawyers imply criticisms of witnesses to juries."
----- J's point about the malevolent implicature.
"The ability to implicitly criticise the witness is
an important weapon in lawyers' rhetorical arsenals since, as
Amsterdam and Bruner (2000) observe, it allows them to deny
having made an assertion if it is challenged and also allows
them to subtly persuade the jury (p. 175-176)."
"However, despite the importance of this phenomenon, previous studies
into it have been tentative. This is the reason for my research."
"In this study I will report on an analysis of the different ways
that lawyers use their questions to implicitly criticise witnesses
during cross-examination."
"In this analysis I employed two methodologies."
"First, a qualitative pragmatic methodology,
referring to the work of Grice (1975) to identify lawyers' use
of implicature in cross-examination,"
----
"Second, a corpus methodology to enable the quantitative
surveying of different types of lawyers' questions that
generate implicature."
"The data I analyse are official courtroom transcripts of recent, criminal cases that I have extracted from electronic sources - including the trials of Dr Harold Shipman and of Oklahoma Bombing conspirator Terry Nichols."
"I conclude that lawyers embed implicit criticism of witnesses in their questions during cross-examination not only for the reasons listed above, but also because a witness cannot refute a criticism that is not made explicitly due to
their constrained speaking rights
----- [this relates to Grice's point on 'cross-examination' (?). WoW: 369) JLS]
, and also if they do challenge an implicit criticism, they risk bringing it to the attention of the jury."
Keywords: implicature; inference; pragmatics; corpus; cross-examination questioning.
----
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For purposes of analysis, I think I would treat a cross-examination (any examination, actually) as two conversations: one between the witness and jury, in which the examining lawyer plays the role of the jury as U and the jury plays the role of the jury as A, and one between the examining lawyer and the jury, in which the role of the lawyer's utterances is played by the implicatures raised by his choice of questions.
ReplyDeleteVery good. Will try to elaborate on that. Kramer is referring to abtract modelling here, which should appeal Grice. In the commentary on Goadly, for example, I notice yet again this criticism to Grice that 'he did not consider social variation', etc. -- and that his 'conversations back in Oxford' may have been cooperative but that you cannot 'translate', etc. -- and this may relate to Wharton (also in this post which I entitled using Wharton's choice of 'hostile' to refer to 'cross-examination')).
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that since his 1965 (still unpublished) "Logic and Conversation" Lectures, Grice was into some abstract modelling with some sort of even Chomskyan type of 'abstraction' as to the, if not the ideal native speaker, the totally homogeneous pair of two rational agents. It is to THIS model that the point of 'implicature' was raised, indeed to deal with 'conversation' qua logical disputation in the Oxford of his day. Quite a stretch from a courtroom in San Diego!
--- So, surely we can distinguish between abstract modellings, and the logical and physical device, 'conversation', even in scare quotes. The roles of U and A indeed maintain. And as Kramer notes, there's the lawyer playing the role of the jury qua U, with the jury being the A. In the second, more abstract, modelling, which is more complex, "the role of the lawyer's utterances is played by the implicatures raised by his choice of questions".
----- So I will elabote on that. When Kramer says, "all examination really" -- consider indeed, the different 'cross-examination' and 'redirect examination'. Etc.