The appropriation of the judicial register in the exercise of citizens? rights

CARRANZA, ISOLDA E.

Murcia

Simposio; 21st Sociolinguistic Symposium; 2016

Universidad de Murcia

Socially recognizable registers have been the object of stimulating theoretical developments which have applied the concepts of orders of indexicality (Silverstein 1996), register model (Agha 2007), style (Auer 2007), styling (Coupland 2007), stance (Jaffe 2009) and polycentricity (Blommaert 2010) and have spurred the exploration of stereotypes, sociolinguistic ownership and legitimacy, double-voicing and hybridation as well as authenticity and imitation. These concerns are on the basis of this study of the widespread, albeit partial use of an institutional and professional register by an outgroup.The analysis focuses on the appropriation of features of the judicial register in incomplete, painstaking and defective ways in hand-written texts produced by inmates in a penitentiary addressing the judge who supervises the detention conditions. These letters are requests for a meeting in order to vent grievances or to ask for relocation. In an age of technological advances, a large number of citizens draw on minimal material resources to communicate with State representatives and often turn to other inmates who write for them or provide a model to copy. An ethnography-based research program of various sites of the justice system in Córdoba (Argentina) provided the framework to enter the Execution of Judgement branch. The methodological approach includes long-term fieldwork in the offices observing the private interviews with a court clerkthat each individual inmate had previously requested in writing. This corpus of verbal interactions throws light on the participants' repertoires and the linguistic resources they had applied in the letters. The written text that has the inmate as a principal, but not always as a composer, is highly heterogeneous; nevertheless, there is an identifiable orientation to a center of linguistic authority which is perceived as the standard to be attained. The findings about this fragmentary and utilitarian appropriation of the expert register provide insights about the subjectivities at play and the alignmentwith social types. Agha (2007) argues that a register's dimension of indexicality surfaces in the performance of a social persona's image as one's own. However, the use of the ingroup register observed in the data does not suffice to constitute a subject with the rights and standing of those whoare competent in the legitimated language of the judicial field. The combinations of heterogeneous features as well as the hand-writing and graphic materiality of the text-artifact contribute to project the images of a type of collective subject -user of the bureaucracy- and a macrosocial type of lowsocioeducational status. In addition, the inconsistent choice of resources point to the presence of distributed agency in a context characterized by symbolic, social and practical constraints. With respect to mediation in contact communication between citizens and institutions, a critical view of the case under study must question the absence of alternative mediations and additionalcommunication channels. Both the production processes and the textual features reveal the effects of social structures over these communicative practices. The results provide support for a reflection about the connections between the observed practices and the sociocultural order.