Morality on the stand: The strategic invocation of cultural knowledge in lay-witness examination

DÉBORA MÓNICA AMADIO; SUSANA LIRUSO; FLORENCIA GIMÉNEZ

Voices and views: English language issues from different perspectives

Facultad de Lenguas

Lugar: Córdoba; Año: 2019; p. 256 - 288

Grounded in the theoretical perspective of situated discourse analysis (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2001, 2003; van Dijk, 1999), this article explores the discursive construction of a particular version of the past in an institutional setting. It examines courtroom discourse in order to analyze discursive mechanisms oriented to the generation of implicit content favourable for one of the parties in the conflict. The data come from the official transcripts of a notorious criminal case that took place in the US in 2002. For this study, face-to-face interactions between litigants and lay witnesses were analyzed. Previous research studies carried out in comparable institutional contexts (Ehrlich, 2002; Matoesian, 2005) have detected different interactional mechanisms aimed at discrediting witnesses on the stand; however, none of them accounts for the relationship between socio-cognitive aspects and contextual factors at play in strategic interactions. This study shows that litigants ask questions skilfully designed to activate mental representations included in situation models (van Dijk, 1999) and associated with acceptable routine behaviour in public. It is observed that routine ways of acting are invoked in order to generate inferences about the similarities between expected behaviour and concrete past behaviour exhibited by one of the parties in the conflict. By being compatible with a group?s alleged typical conduct, concrete behaviour is constructed as ?normal?. In addition, the evocation of social expectations is used to construct a past conduct as marked, particularized, and peculiar of a person to whom such conduct is attributed. The analysis of implicit content generated gradually as the negotiation of meanings progresses indicates that the function of the evocation of cultural knowledge is to damage or enhance an individual?s face (Goffman, 1967). The conclusions derived relate to the cultural assumptions connected with the dimension of morality that guarantee the effectiveness of the cognitive and interactional strategy described.