Abstract:
Law courts purport to be seats of justice, yet there is constant debate about the evenhandedness
of that justice and ordinary people’s access to it. This thesis reports on a
study of seven criminal hearings in the District Court in Auckland, New Zealand.
The study focussed on repair (as defined in conversation analysis) and various
phenomena which have been identified previously as characteristic of “powerless
language” (that is, the speech used by those in subordinate positions to their social
superiors). These phenomena included hesitations, hedges, intensifiers, witnesses asking
questions, tag questions, high rising terminal intonation, polite terms, terms of address
and well.
The results of the analysis have led to two interesting conclusions. First, traditionally
linguists have considered repair as a means of dealing with problems. As such, repair
itself has often been thought of as a problem. As far as these seven hearings are
concerned, it is evident that repair is being used as a highly effective interactional
resource in the process of “coming to an understanding” which seems to me to be the
basis of courtroom interaction.
Second, the study calls the notion of powerless language into question. While it is true
that many researchers have found that people evaluate powerless language negatively,
this study finds that a) the features which have been said to form the powerless style in
English are not used only by the powerless people in these hearings and b) these features
cannot always or necessarily be said to operate in a powerless manner during the
hearings. The analysis has produced a more detailed account of the features and their use
than previous studies have achieved. The results show that the notion of powerless
language is highly questionable. This in turn means that further study is necessary into
how people make judgements on language use and what role such judgements play in the
decisions of juries.