特别报道：第七届国际法律语言学大会在英国召开
第七届国际法律语言学大会论文摘要
（二）
Clive
Forrester
University of the West Indies,Mona,Jamaica
The
Discourse of Time in the Jamaican Courtroom:Creole speaking
witness meets English speaking counsel
Within
the context of the courtroom the clarification of issues
surrounding time is a very crucial matter.In fact,in many cases,
establishing that a crime took place at a particular time and over
a particular temporal span is as significant a piece of evidence
as any other –linguistic or otherwise.Not only does
prosecuting counsel have the burden of placing the accused at the
scene of the crime but at the “time of the crime.”For the
most part,witness testimonies in criminal trials take the form of
a narrative.The smallest unit of the narrative is an event and
these are what witnesses must recall.However,witnesses are not
merely asked to recall events in a linear fashion,they may be
asked to (a)say which events were occurring simultaneously,(b)
break down events into smaller sub-events,and (c)open the
temporal constitutent of an event and make judgments on duration
among other things.This paper will discuss the linguistic devices
used by Creole speaking Jamaican witnesses in the Jamaican
courtroom to make these distinctions between events.The paper
will also highlight the problems that can be encountered as a
result of the cross-linguistic interaction between Creole speaking
witness and English speaking counsel when issues of time are to be
considered for the courtroom.Finally,the paper will consider
methods by which any level of miscommunication can be alleviated.
Georgia Frantzeskou,Efstathios Stamatatos and Stefanos
Gritzalis
University of the Aegean,Greece
Source
Code Authorship Analysis using N-grams
Source
Code Authorship Analysis is the particular field that attempts to
identify the author of a computer program by treating each program
as a linguistically analyzable entity.This is usually done based
on other program samples from the same programmer.There are
several cases where the application of such a method could be of a
major benefit:
*
Tracing the source of code left in the system after a cyber
attack.
*Authorship disputes,proof of authorship in court.
The
methodology that has been followed in all research efforts till
now is divided into two steps.The first step is the extraction of
software metrics and the second step is using these metrics to
develop models that are capable of discriminating between several
authors,using Discriminant Analysis,Neural Networks and Case
Base Reasoning.Some features of this methodology are:
*
The Software Metrics used are programming -language dependant.
*The Modeling techniques used have provided prediction accuracy
rates of up to 88%.
In
this paper we present our innovative approach,which is an
extension of a method that has been implemented in text authorship
identification.The accuracy of the results of our research work
is at the level of the current state-of-the-art approaches or
higher in many cases.In our method,byte-level N-grams are
utilised together with author profiles of restricted size.
Additionally,a simple algorithm is presented for calculating
similarity.We have implemented a number of experiments using byte
level N-grams and the results have shown the following:
*
Our methodology used is programming -language independent.
*Prediction accuracy reached was between 90%-100%,depending on
the size of the training sample.
*Comments do not play a significant role in classification
accuracy.This has been demonstrated by an experiment with
programs without any comments.
*Programs can be classified correctly of up to 99%,by using
their comments only.
Isabel Gomez Diez
Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium)and Universidad Pompeu Fabra
(Spain)
The
transformation of asylum seekers’narratives through the asylum
procedure”
In
the asylum process in Belgium,applicants must attend two
interviews:the first in which they are screened and the second in
which they are interviewed in depth.During the first interview an
official must take contemporaneous notes in order to draw up a
report.This report,as Blommaert (2000)notes,has the status of
an affidavit.From this moment onwards,it is the source and
reference text for all other steps in the procedure.This paper
describes the variation between the interview and the written
report and determines if these transformations entail
“alteration”(Olsson 1997)of the sense of the applicant’s
discourse.The corpus studied for this paper is composed of six
screening interviews which took place at the Immigration Office in
Brussels during the Autumn of 2004and the corresponding reports
written by the interviewers.Most of these interviews were
conducted in French and most applicants came from African
countries.In order to explain the differences between the
interview and the report,the paper identifies linguistic features
at the discursive,morpho-syntactic and lexical level,which are
explained in terms of linguistic and functional dimensions based
mainly on existing models of variation between oral and written
texts (Halliday (1989);Biber (1988);Chafe (1986);Tannen (1986);
Jonsson and Linell (1991);Gibbons (2003):such as epistemic
modality (dubitative-declarative),event perspective
(depersonalization)or contextualization (explicit vs.
situation-dependent reference).From this analysis it can be seen
that,with regard to alteration,the interviewer does not
systematically transcribe the questions he or she asks during the
interview,because the official’s purpose is to make a
homogeneous text that integrates all answers given by the
interviewee.This implies a conversion from a dialogic mode to a
monologic mode and the blurring of source distinctions.
Nevertheless,it is possible to find linguistic evidence of the
deletion of questions,such as negative clauses and absence of
inter-clausal cohesion.Moreover,the transformations that can
have an impact over a decision of inaccessibility must be taken
into consideration.These include A)Omission of hesitating
markers in the report,substitution of adverbs of degree (pas
tellement)by polarity adverbs (yes/no,always/never).All things
that move the discourse from the field of the fuzzy memory
(hesitating mood)towards the field of certainty (declarative
mood)B)Inconsistency in the use of reported speech structures by
the official.C)Introduction of terminology of established legal
categories that contributes to the depersonalisation of the story
and therefore to the impression of generality associated with
fraudulent stories.
Tim Grant
University of Leicester
Quantifying
evidence in forensic authorship analysis
The
judicial interest in 'scientific'evidence has driven interest in
quantified results for forensic linguistic authorship analysis.
Through a worked example this paper examines methodological issues
which hinder the possibility of quantifying results in forensic
authorship analysis work.The solution suggested to some of the
obstacles is a sampling and testing strategy which helps identify
potentially useful,valid and reliable markers of authorship.An
important feature of the sampling strategy is that these markers
are then retested for use in specific authorship problems.The
approach for drawing quantified conclusions combines discriminant
function analysis and Bayesian likelihood measures.The worked
example starts with 20comparison texts for each of three
potential authors and then uses a progressively smaller comparison
corpus,reducing to 15,10,5and 3texts per author.This example
demonstrates how reducing data affects the way conclusions can be
drawn.With greater numbers of reference texts quantified and safe
attributions are shown to be possible,but as the number of
reference texts reduces the analysis shows how the conclusion can
and should be reached that with these texts and with this amount
of data,no attribution is possible.The testing process at no
point results instances of a misattribution.The method is
evaluated against in the light of evidentiary standards in the UK
and USAjurisdictions.
Gillian Grebler
Linguistic and Cultural Forensics
“And
then what did she say?”Making confession statements believable
and compelling (even when they are false)
There
are many elements in a legal confession,true or false,that give
it credence and persuasive power.In the case of a false
confession these work together to produce a
“narrative truth”from an actual fiction.In the hands of
police and prosecutors this fictional account becomes compelling
legal evidence.With powerful persuasive effect on judge and jury,
false confessions have often been the primary basis for wrongful
convictions.Among the elements that police interrogators seek to
include in suspects’accounts are idiosyncratic details about
the particular crime,as well as the thoughts and feelings of the
suspect.These sensual and cognitive details make the story vivid
and lend it verisimilitude.Also sought is
talk:any verbal comment or conversation that the suspect
remembers.This reported speech is important:as Randy Kandel says
(“Why Evidence Scholars Should Study Conversation,ICE Journal,
2002)reported speech gives “a strong appearance of veracity,
specificity and accuracy of memory…that afford an adept
user…an edge in convincing other participants,triers of fact,
decision-makers and consensus builders…”.In this paper Ilook
at a number of proven false confessions from the UK,USA,
considering the discourse features,in particular reported speech,
which made these confessions compelling,believable and in many
cases the basis for wrongful convictions.
Mel Greenlee
California Appellate Project
“At
that time my speaking doesn’t make any sense”:Interpreters
and capital error
The
United States Supreme Court has ruled that in trials in which a
death sentence may be imposed,a heightened standard of due
process should apply,with scrupulous attention to fundamental
fairness.In the past decade,the exoneration of over one hundred
Death Row prisoners in the U.S.has led to increased public doubt
about whether these procedural safeguards are,in fact,effective.
Accurate recording of trial testimony is one crucial component of
a fair trial.California courts have generally engaged in the
legal (and linguistic)fiction that when witnesses do not speak
English,the interpreted English version,the only version
actually recorded,accurately reflects the original.Similarly,
courts engage in the legal fiction that jurors’assessment of
witnesses’credibility is unaffected by interpretation,despite
ample linguistic research to the contrary.(See,e.g.,
Berk-Seligson,The Bilingual Courtroom (2002).)On appeal,legal
claims of error based on interpreters have had limited success.
The present work tests and highlights these legal/linguistic
fictions in a subset of California capital cases,examining
interpreted testimony in the appellate record of trial
proceedings.The examination reveals that even for such critical
witnesses as defendants and surviving victims,interpreted
testimony may be crucially marred by grammatical error,ambiguity
and nonsequiturs which impair its assessment by the jury and the
reviewing court.Because the testimony is garbled,jurors may rely
instead on recaps,repairs or summaries of testimony provided by
counsel,despite instructions that arguments are not evidence.The
paper concludes with a renewed call for complete and accurate
recording of testimony in the original language and for
collaborative efforts between linguists and legal scholars to
ensure greater accountability and equity in capital litigation.
Mark Griffiths
Cardiff University
Towards the audiofit -non-linguists’perceptions and
articulations of unknown voices in a forensic context
Recordings
of crimes in action rarely exist and criminal investigations are
often reliant on the accounts of the eye and earwitness.However,
unlike the vast body of research that exists on eyewitness
perceptions,and in contrast to the videofit technology that
allows police to elicit and refine eyewitness descriptions,little
if any research has been conducted into non-linguist perceptions
of unknown voices in a forensic context.Without this research,we
are a long way from developing an audiofit –an instrument to
facilitate meaningful and reliable non-linguist accounts of the
voices heard.Based on on-going research conducted at Cardiff
University using voice donors and respondents from South Wales and
the South West,South East and Midlands areas of England,this
paper exemplifies non-linguist perceptions of unknown voices in
forensic contexts;specifically,the perceptual categories used by
non-linguists to differentiate and contrast features of a voice
and accent,and the vocabulary employed by non-linguists to
articulate their perceptions.Furthermore,by examining
interactions between voice,accent,crime type and attendant
social stereotypes,this paper provides both warnings and
encouragement to those wishing to conduct further research in this
field.
Chris Heffer
Nottingham Trent University,UK
Jury
Instruction as Communication Process
Clear
and effective instruction of juries prior to deliberation is
crucial to the validity of jury trial.One key aspect of that
communication event is the extent to which the jury instructions
themselves are comprehended by jurors.Consequently,most research
and debate in both legal and social scientific contexts has
focussed on the comprehensibility of orally-delivered written jury
instructions.Since early research (particularly in the US)showed
that the majority of jurors are not able to comprehend the
majority of such jury instructions,subsequent research has tended
to focus on rewriting the jury instructions themselves.This paper
argues that we need to consider jury instruction as a
communication process involving much more than simply the clarity
of written instructions.Drawing on a number of frameworks from
linguistics,psychology and communication science,this paper
considers some of the central factors involved in the jury
instruction process and suggests that focussing only on the
clarity of pre-prepared ‘pattern’jury instructions might be
missing the mark.The discussion reveals a fundamental distinction
in approach between seeing jury instructions as an inflexible
discoursal product and seeing jury instruction as a variable
performative process.This difference is highlighted by comparing
Judge Ito’s delivery of the Californian standard of proof
instruction in the OJ Simpson trial with a number of quite
distinct performance variations on the English ‘specimen
direction’drawn from the author’s corpus of 100judicial
summings-up to the jury.The paper suggests that effective
communication between legal professionals and lay jurors involves
much more than a clear interpretation and presentation of legal
concepts.
Blake Stephen Howald===========================
University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Comparative
and Non-Comparative Forensic Linguistic Analysis Techniques:
Methodologies for Negotiating the Interface of Linguistics and
Evidentiary Jurisprudence in American Criminal Procedure
This
paper surveys,from the point of view of the legal practitioner,
the treatment of what Iwill refer to as Forensic Linguistic
Analysis Techniques (FLATs)as evidence in American grand jury
proceedings and criminal trials.FLATs generally fall into
comparative (e.g.voice print analysis and author attribution)and
non-comparative (e.g.authorship profiling and psycholinguistic
threat analysis)categories.(For an overview of these techniques
see e.g.Coulthard 1994;Gibbons 2003;Kniffka 1993,1994,1999;
McMenamin 2002;Olsson 2004;Shuy 2002.)Unfortunately,due to the
development of many FLATs by non-linguists,the stigma of “more
art than science”has permeated into many aspects of both
comparative and non-comparative FLATs.Comparative FLATs,which
seek to attribute a text or recording to a potential suspect,are
most likely to be accepted in criminal proceedings where the rules
of evidence apply and the burden of proof is highest (e.g.trial).
Non-comparative FLATs,which analyze a text or recording in
isolation,have minimal acceptance even at the level of the grand
jury,where the rules of evidence do not apply.Despite
comparative FLATs enjoying a higher rate of evidentiary admission
due to statistically quantifiable comparisons,non-comparative
FLATs are no less useful or investigatively relevant;quite the
contrary.Iwill show that it is the non-comparative FLATs that
enjoy the greatest possibility for admission in criminal trials,
because there is more opportunity for the trained linguist to pull
the FLATinto the realm of independent scientific evidence under
the Daubert standard.From the standpoint of the legal
practitioner,the main obstacle to the admission of both
comparative and non-comparative FLATs is the lack of normalization
and scientific backing from the field of linguistics itself.
Increased involvement by trained linguists will not only work to
solidify the role of forensic linguistics in criminal procedure,
but also work toward the increased admission of FLATs in criminal
evidentiary proceedings.Iwill present an analysis of American
case law that indicates a predictive trend of admissibility for
FLATs.Idemonstrate that this predictive trend provides guidance
to the field of linguistics for the refinement of many existing
techniques through scientific analysis by illustrating the
evidentiary requirement necessary for admission.Furthermore,the
predictive trend can be used as a tool for the legal practitioner
faced with presenting FLATs in criminal evidentiary proceedings by
illustrating the current state of accepted FLATs and where
potential deficiencies exist that may create problems for
admission.
Alison
Johnson
University of Birmingham
"From where are sat"Achieving a change of state in
suspect and witness knowledge through evaluation in the police
interview.
Labov and Waletzky’s (1997)model of narrative has been applied
to both oral and written narratives in a range of contexts.
Edwards (1997),though,points out that they overlook the presence
of evaluation in the things that "occasion"the
narrative,looking only at narrative as monologue rather than as
an interaction.In the police interview the narrative is produced
in dyadic interaction within an institutional context where the
key goal is to occasion a narrative as evidence and this is done
through questioning and elicitation sequences.This paper examines
police interviews with suspects,looking at discourse markers and
evaluative patterns and frameworks that reveal how evaluation is
carried out in a range of question and response speech acts (Stenstrom,
1984)and looks at the marking of stance by interviewers in
relation to the evidential value of the elicited narrative.The
analysis illustrates features of contested and collaborative
evaluation,marked in turns that reveal concessive and adversative
positions.It shows how discourse rules and roles develop in an
evolving and "renewing"context (Heritage,1984)with
interviewers and interviewees changing their stance and altering
their footing,moving from interrogator to therapist and from
cooperation to non-cooperation and back again.Idraw on pragmatic
principles from conversational analysis of institutional
interaction (Drew &Heritage,1992),from Forensic discourse
analysis and from appraisal theory,particularly Martin (1993),
Hunston and Sinclair and Hunston and Thompson (1993).Conclusions
point to the function of discourse markers and evaluative frames
as important features of interviewer activity.It is suggested
that these function to achieve a change of state in suspect and
witness knowledge through the interview.They also have a role in
the elicitation of a confession,in the case of suspects.It sheds
some light on the marking of narrative evaluation in stories that
are elicited rather than performed and for legal rather than
social purposes.
Cecilia Joseph
University of Malaya and Cardiff University
Listening
to manage resistance to talk:Balancing neutrality and affiliation
in forensic interviews with children
This
study seeks to identify the types of resistance to talk that
children display in forensic police interviews and to examine how
the police officers orient their responses towards these forms of
resistance.The data is taken from 11police interviews with
children of ages ranging from 4to 8years old.The analysis
demonstrates three types of resistance 1)silent withdrawals,2)
utterances disclaiming knowledge such as ‘Idunno’and ‘I
don’t remember’and,3)utterances displaying non-cooperation
such as ‘Nothing happened’and ‘No’.The police
interviewers’responses to these forms of resistance suggest
that they seek to negotiate the delicate balance between treating
these forms of resistance as cognitively salient responses and as
non-cognitive avoidance strategies.This has further implications
for the role of the police interviewer in terms of reconciling the
dual obligations of maintaining neutrality as dictated by the
norms of the interview protocols and displaying affiliation to
encourage further talk from the children and pursue the prescribed
agenda of the interview.The implications of these tensions on the
efficacy of listening to the child in the context of forensic
interviews will be discussed.
Silke Kirschner
Serious Crime Analysis Section,National Crime and Operations
Faculty
Behavioural
consistency?Linguistic concepts of variation and the analysis of
speech in case linkage
The
Serious Crime Analysis Section (SCAS)is a service for police
forces in the UK(and Northern Ireland),assisting them in the
detection of serious crimes (murder,rape and abduction).The main
aspect of the unit’s work is to collect all related case papers,
to input relevant data onto the SCASdatabase (ViCLAS),to analyse
the offence and search ViCLASfor similar cases.The analytical
process is based on the “consistency premise”with the
following main pillars:
-
Individuals are not random in their behaviour.
-The degree of variation within one individual’s actions is
less than the range of variation across a number of individuals.
-The consistent actions of an individual can discriminate him/her
from others.
First,
analysing the conversational interaction between rapists and
victims is one part of the crime analysis.So far,classification
systems for analysing speech have been used within SCASthat are
not based on linguistic concepts.Second,however,if we consider
language as one element that constitutes human behaviour,it is
worthwhile discussing what causes variation and consistency from a
linguistic perspective.Could concepts such as idiolect,register
and genre make a contribution to comparative case analysis and
case linkage?Lastly,it will be examined what “realistic”
prospects there are of introducing those linguistic concepts into
“everyday”case analysis.
Hannes Kniffka
Bonn University
Orthographic
Data in forensic linguistic authorship analysis
The
role and status of orthographic data (OD)in a forensic linguistic
anonymous authorship analysis is a much debated issue in a much
debated field of forensic linguistics.Several methodological,
theoretical,and,even more so,practical-analytical questions
have not been dealt with satisfactorily.Some have not been given
adequate answers to date.Others haven’t even been stated
properly as questions.Yet others haven’t found the “general
linguist’s”attention though the practitioner’s concerns and
interests have been articulated thoroughly (and vice versa,
practitioners have not taken “general linguistic”data into
account properly).There obviously is some kind of
miscommunication going on,at times,between the two.Since some
people work as both,it may be miscommunication with the “alter
ego”.This paper tries to elaborate on the methodological and
theoretical status of orthographic data by giving heuristic
taxonomies of classes of ODfrom a systemic grammatical,
sociolinguistic,and text linguistic perspective,focussing on the
“diagnostic potential”that may or may not be assessed to OD
in the context of authorship analysis.ALLdata (items,features,
analyses)presented are taken from real life forensic cases,
dating from 1974to the present time,in which the author was
asked to give expert testimony in/for German courts and other
authorities.The aim of the paper is to illustrate the complex
status of ODby an extensional definition of the phenomena,the
introduction of some additional necessary distinctions,and a
clarification of the position of ODin the total argumentation
context of a forensic linguistic authorship analysis.
Krzysztof Kredens
University of Lodz
Lexicography
and the ownership of language –a case study
In
forensic linguistic discussions of plagiarism the focus is
primarily on issues of detection.Whether,or to what extent,a
particular instance of replication constitutes copyright
infringement is a legal concern.However,linguistic and legal
aspects of plagiarism can converge in complex ways,to the effect
that the actual determination of the legal status of text by
triers of fact may not be possible without a more significant
linguistic contribution.This paper treats of such a contribution
in a real case and,drawing on its implications,re-examines the
issue of language ownership.Arecent case heard in a Polish civil
court has involved two software packages,each containing a
Polish-English and English-Polish electronic dictionary.
Approached by the applicant,Igave an opinion indicating that the
dictionaries shared over 70per cent of all entries and that it
was highly unlikely that they had been created independently.In
this paper,Iwill present the methodology that lead to my
conclusions and identify implications for the discussion of
plagiarism,authorship,and ownership of language.Iwill also
make references to a long-running,high-profile legal battle
involving the publishers of two monolingual dictionaries of
Polish,in which the respondent,apart from arguing that the
Polish language belongs to the whole nation,claims that
dictionaries are alike by their very nature and thus preclude
lexicographic originality.Obviously fallacious for monolingual
dictionary-making,this argument cannot be discounted in the case
of bilingual dictionaries,where a significant proportion of
entries for the same lexical items are bound to be identical.
Dennis Kurzon
University of Haifa,Israel
Interpretation
Without Linguistics:The case of Newdow
It
may be expected,especially among linguists,that when a court –
the judges and lawyers –deal with the interpretation of the
language of statutes,constitutions,and other legal documents,
some reference be made to linguistic phenomena,although not
necessarily in terms linguists would use.In the case under
examination,which had became a cause célèbre in the United
States from 2002until the Supreme Court gave its judgment in
2004,Michael Newdow,an avowed atheist,claimed that the Pledge
of Allegiance with the addition of the phrase "one Nation
under God",which his daughter had to say everyday at school,
is unconstitutional,contrary to the First Amendment's prohibition
of the establishment of religion.From a reading of the judgment
of the State Appeal Court (Ninth Circuit)and documents presented
to the Supreme Court and its own final judgment,it may be seen
that with one exception –in the State Appeal Court,where the
judge giving the majority opinion refers once to Austin's speech
act theory in relation to the Pledge,issues such as the speech
act status of prayer and logical and pragmatic presuppositions
were not addressed.For example,the judges assumed that the
Pledge is not a prayer,without showing why this is so.The courts
focused on legal issues such as prudential standing,coercion as
well as precedents.The question that may be asked is whether
communication between lawyers and linguists in this particular
case and in other cases centering on interpretation and on
forensic linguistic evidence,is unidirectional --from the
linguist to the lawyer –and reception is poor at the lawyer's
end.
Wojciech Kwarcinski
Adam
Mickiewicz University,Poznan,Poland
Some
parallels between pragmalinguistic and legal models of
interpretation
This
paper examines some of the pragmalinguistic aspects of the
multi-level method of statutory interpretation that has been
proposed recently in legal theory.It attempts to demonstrate that
although the multi-level analysis of legal texts originates from
jurisprudence,the principles on which it is based are homologous
in many important respects to the central concepts of speech act
theory that relate to utterance and text understanding.First,the
derivation of the propositional content of utterances in speech
act theory is remarkably similar to the procedure followed at the
descriptive level of statutory interpretation.Second,given that
all legal speech acts are intended to change the legal situation,
they should be regarded as having the primary illocutionary force
of a declaration.Since such utterances are conventional acts of a
higher order,their function is determined mainly by the
institutional context of the legal speech event in which they are
performed.These contextual factors relevant to the production and
interpretation of legal speech acts can be captured in terms of
constitutive rules which closely correspond to the maxims of
statutory interpretation postulated at the directive level.And
finally,the notion of presupposition formation is employed not
only in pragmatic accounts of “ordinary”language but also in
the final stage of the legal interpretation of statutes considered
here.
The study shows that sufficient compatibility exists between the
two frameworks to suggest that the process of understanding of
legal texts displays some distinctive features that must be
explored in any valid analysis of statutory interpretation.It
also presents evidence that,as far as institutional speech acts
are concerned,the insights provided by the pragmalinguistic
inferential model of derivation of the content and function of
utterances are independently confirmed by legal theory.
Nicola Langton
Cardiff University
Cleaning
up the Act
A
common critique of common law language is that is not straight
forward at its best and incomprehensible at its worst.Some argue
that the style of legal writing is necessary if the document is to
successfully set out and define the duties,obligations and rights
of the parties involved;provide necessary qualifications to limit
the scope of these duties etc;be clear,precise,unambiguous and
all-inclusive;and achieve its intended communicative purpose.Is
this really so?The purpose of this paper is to show that,in some
instances,there is no significant loss of purpose or scope (or
even kudos)if the legal texts are written in a different way.
Indeed,if the text genre and communicative purposes are clearly
understood,many of the problems of unusual sentence/grammar
structures,information overload and unwieldily qualifications can
be clarified and the legal text 'reformulated’(my term)in ways
that aid not only legal practitioners,researchers and
translators,but also ordinary members of the public.This paper
will therefore illustrate ways in which legislative texts and
contracts can be analysed and unpacked to reveal the cognitive
structure and communicative purposes that underpin their
construction (Bhatia 1993).Methods for easifying (Bhatia 1983)
and reformulating the texts in ways that adhere to the principles
of Plain English (Asprey 1991;Kimble 1992)(and plain grammar),
while respecting not only the cognitive structure and
communicative structures but also the legislative drafting norms
(Crystal &Davy 1969;Fung &Watson-Brown 1994),will also
be illustrated for discussion and feedback.
References:
Asprey,
M.M.(1991)Plain Language for Lawyers.Federation Press pp157
-162
Bhatia,V.K.,(1983):Simplification v Easification:the case of
legal texts.Applied Linguistics.4,1,(42-54)
Bhatia,V.K.(1993)Analysing Genre:Language Use in Professional
Settings.London:Longman
Crystal,D.&Davy,D.(1969)Investigating English Style.
Longman:London
Danet,B.(1980).Language in the Legal Process,Law and Society
Review,Vol 14,No 3,(Spring 980)pp.445–564
Fung.S&Watson-Brown A:The Template.A Guide for the
Analysis of Complex Legislation,1994,pp 34-37,69-71.
Kimble,J.(1992)Plain English:A Charter for Clear Writing.
Thomas M.Cooley Law Review 9:1,pp11-14
Mellinkoff,D.(1963)The Language of the Law.Boston:Little
Brown
Ruth Lanouette
Lawrence University,USA
An
Examination of a Pro Se Defense
The
focus of this paper is a close examination of a pro se defense
involving a murder trial.During the trial,which lasted five
days,the defendant chose to represent himself for the first three
days.For the final two days,a court-appointed attorney took over
the defense after the defendant informed the judge that he felt
unable to continue his own defense.In this study,Iexamine
several aspects of the trial,including such elements as the types
of questions posed by the defendant,the number and type of
objections raised by the district attorney,and the interaction
between the defendant-attorney and witnesses.Because all of the
witnesses for the defense testified during the final two days of
the trial,there are no examples of direct examination by the
defendant.Following a general overview of the structure of the
trial,and ways in which it differs from other trials Ihave
looked at,Iwill focus on aspects of the defendant’s approach
which seem to be particularly problematic.These include the
defendant’s tendency to repeat the same question over and over
while receiving the same answer from the witness,his sudden shift
of topic,his frequent inability to formulate comprehensible
questions,his obvious show of frustration when a witness would
not see things his way,and,most importantly,his failure to
respond to the case the district attorney was building against
him.The defendant’s sometimes chaotic,and sometimes overly
focused defense stands in stark contrast to the district
attorney’s carefully planned,well-structured,and logical
approach.
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2005年7月18日 |
