Trial Language
Trial Language

Author: Gail Stygall

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1994-11-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9027282846

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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.

Language on Trial
Language on Trial

Author: Plain English Campaign

Publisher: Robson Books Limited

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13:

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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.

The Language of Jury Trial
The Language of Jury Trial

Author: C. Heffer

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0230502881

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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.

Trial Language
Trial Language

Author: Gail Stygall

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9027250383

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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.

Free Speech On Trial
Free Speech On Trial

Author: Richard A. Parker

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2003-07-21

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 081735025X

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Describes landmark free speech decisions of the Supreme Court while highlighting the issues of language, rhetoric, and communication that underlie them. At the intersection of communication and First Amendment law reside two significant questions: What is the speech we ought to protect, and why should we protect it? The 20 scholars of legal communication whose essays are gathered in this volume propose various answers to these questions, but their essays share an abiding concern with a constitutional guarantee of free speech and its symbiotic relationship with communication practices. Free Speech on Trial fills a gap between textbooks that summarize First Amendment law and books that analyze case law and legal theory. These essays explore questions regarding the significance of unregulated speech in a marketplace of goods and ideas, the limits of offensive language and obscenity as expression, the power of symbols, and consequences of restraint prior to publication versus the subsequent punishment of sources. As one example, Craig Smith cites Buckley vs. Valeo to examine how the context of corruption in the 1974 elections shaped the Court's view of the constitutionality of campaign contributions and expenditures. Collectively, the essays in this volume suggest that the life of free speech law is communication. The contributors reveal how the Court's free speech opinions constitute discursive performances that fashion, deconstruct, and reformulate the contours and parameters of the Constitution’s guarantee of free expression and that, ultimately, reconstitute our government, our culture, and our society.

Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary

Author: John A. Simpson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-04-18

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780195218893

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The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.

The Right to Be Present at Trial in International Criminal Law
The Right to Be Present at Trial in International Criminal Law

Author: Caleb H. Wheeler

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 9004376860

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In The Right to Be Present at Trial in International Criminal Law Caleb H. Wheeler analyses how the right to be present is understood by international criminal courts and tribunals in the context of the right to a fair trial.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Law and the Language of Identity
Law and the Language of Identity

Author: Gregory M. Matoesian

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0195123301

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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.

Redefining Trial by Media
Redefining Trial by Media

Author: Simon Statham

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9027266824

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Redefining Trial by Media: Towards a critical-forensic linguistic interface applies a range of linguistic models to recast trial by media not as a sensationalist and infrequent phenomenon, but as a systematic and routine process. Using critical discourse analysis and cognitive linguistic models, this book builds a Spectrum of Trial by Media which views juries in criminal trials as moulded by ideological media-made constructions of crime. The role of these media constructions is enhanced by the isolation levied on jurors by the linguistic composition of trial language, and reinforced by the language strategies of legal professionals in court. Critically deconstructing media portrayals of crime and forensically examining the language of criminal proceedings, this book offers a redefinition of trial by media which casts the role of the press as much more prevalent in the courtroom trial than is presently appreciated.