Nailing down an answer: participations of power in trial talk

Abstract

This article examines a questioning strategy in trial crossexamination designed to control an evasive witness, and how that control functions through the interactive contours of verbal and visual conduct to index identity, construct multidimensional forms of participation and project intertextual relations. In the process of nailing down an answer, attorney and witness manipulate linguistic ideologies and project participations of power to calibrate the epistemological criteria for determining the legitimacy of legal realities. I demonstrate how indexical iconicities of trial dialogic form emerge as a contested ritual of truth in the situated details of multimodal discursive practices.

Defending through disaffiliation: The vicissitudes of alignment and footing in Belgian criminal hearings

“…Through footing the attorney, no longer content with referentially "providing information" about the case, "acts out" the presumed cultural boundary separating the defendant from the other participants in the trial, including the attorney who is speaking on the defendant's behalf (D'hondt, 2010). In this sense, these footing practices represent an instance of what Matoesian (2005) refers to as an indexical iconicity of discourse: They do not so much "index" the defendant's otherness, but provide an "iconic" illustration of that otherness, a behavioral part-and-parcel of the phenomenon it calls into being.…”

Investment’s rituals: “Grassroots” extractivism and the making of an indigenous gold mine in the Peruvian Andes

“…Making these dimensions of investment explicit, all together and at once, is not just a common feature of ritual as an interactional semiotic genre that highlights ordinarily tacit values (Matoesian, 2005;Richland, 2007). This is also a means of covering all of the bases, engaging with every possibly involved political and economic actor-with a maximum of ideas about what or who land is, does, and gives.…”

Interpreting reported speech in witnesses’ evidence

“…Witnesses often use reported speech to present facts as well as viewpoints, and lawyers or judges use it as well, whether as quotation, clarification or reformulation of witnesses' evidence in interacting with witnesses (e.g. Philips 1986Philips , 1988Galatolo & Mizzau 2005;Matoesian 1993Matoesian , 2000Matoesian , 2005Perrin et al 2003). Narratives produced in legal settings are multi-perspectival and multi-voiced (Cotterill 2002: 147) and trial discourse itself is often marked by a high degree of intertextuality (Matoesian 2000: 879), with witnesses' version of the event reported in the courtroom being presented in the form of reported speech (see Figure 1).…”