On some communicatively salient complexities of knowledge asymmetries in a jury trial

Anesa, Patrizia; Kastberg, Peter

doi:10.1515/text-2012-0001

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Despite all these works, courtroom discourse has barely been analyzed from the perspective of agonality strategies and their types. Agonality as a principle of interaction has been studied by a number of researchers of political discourse (Anesa, 2009;Anesa, Kastberg, 2012;Eades, 2008;Felton, 2015;Kurzon, 2001;Rusakov & Rusakova, 2015;Saprykina, 2007;Sheigal & Deshevova, 2009;Sidorenko, 2015;Volkova & Panchenko, 2016;Wagner & Cheng, 2011). Only recently has it become a focus of researchers of legal discourse (Bogomazova, 2014;Krapivkina, 2017a;Palashevskaya, 2017;Tiersma & Curtis, 2008).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adversarial, Ludic and Ritual Nature of Discursive Interactions in a Trial

Boginskaya

2022

gema

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This article makes a contribution to the study of courtroom discourse assuming that interactions in a trial are of agonal nature. The study aims to identify and explore key aspects of agonal interactions (adversarial, ludic and ritual) and rhetorical agonal strategies employed in a trial. The study revealed the following adversary strategies used by the prosecutor and the defense attorney to win the struggle: discrediting, refutation and objection. The components of courtroom interactions such as participants struggling to win, referees overseeing the game and selecting the winner and spectators observing the performance indicate its ludic nature. Rituals as an integral component of both games and competitions ensure fair proceedings, regulate participants' behavior, and organize agonal interactions, being the backbone of courtroom trials. The adversary, ludic and ritual components of agonality determine the nature of courtroom activities whose formal goal is to restore justice, and the actual one is to select the winner. The study concluded that these three components of agonality are interrelated: competition is a sign of game, and ludic elements are an integral characteristic of any competition as a product of culture; both competition and game are regulated by rituals and involve participants pursuing opposing goals.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adversarial, Ludic and Ritual Nature of Discursive Interactions in a Trial

Boginskaya

2022

gema

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“…Knowledge asymmetries and verbal interactions between experts and laypersons have been treated by a number of scholars assuming that the specialized knowledge transfer contributes to a better understanding of technical concepts (see, e.g. Anesa, 2012Anesa, , 2016Anesa, , 2018Anesa and Kastberg, 2012;Ciapuscio, 2003;Gotti, 2014;Heffer, 2005;Herijgers and van Charldorp, 2021;Kastberg, 2011;Kevoe-Feldman, 2015;Liebert, 2020;Tiersma, 2010;Tiersma and Curtis, 2008;Turnbull, 2018;Zethsen, 2010). While the previous research is valuable, there is still a complementary contribution to be made by corpusdriven studies on popularization strategies in legal texts written in languages other than English.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Popularizing in legal discourse: What efforts do Russian judges make to facilitate juror’s comprehension of law-related contents?

Boginskaya

2022

Discourse Studies

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Previous research has demonstrated that judicial instructions are not well understood by jurors tasked with returning informative verdicts, and explanatory strategies can facilitate juror’s comprehension of law-related contents. Unlike a great deal of research on legal-lay interactions in a jury trial, most of which is based on English-language materials, the present article uncovers how Russian judges communicate law-related information to the jury. The study was motivated by the lack of guidance on interactions with the jury and the challenges faced by the latter in attempting to understand technical concepts. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of 18 jury instructions, the paper demonstrates that Russian judges work toward the achievement of a goal of recontextualizing law-related information and making legal concepts comprehensible to a lay audience using a wide repertoire of popularization tools, including definitions, descriptions, illustrations, paraphrases and metaphors.

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Preliminary jury instructing: a dilemmatic communication practice

Tracy

2022

Text &Amp; Talk

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This study analyzes judges’ preliminary jury instruction in nine US federal civil trials. Following an overview of past and current jury instructing practices, including the role of pattern instructions, I describe the trial materials and introduce genre analysis and grounded practical theory, the two theoretical-methodological frames I use to analyze judges’ instructing. Judges’ preliminary instructions are shown to include the basic units identified in written pattern instructions. How they are performed reveals significant judge variation, and the variations make apparent difficulties built into the law that are backgrounded when solely written texts are studied. Some of these difficulties surface in judges’ description of the case and law, in orientation to note-taking, and in discussion of what is evidence and how to assess it. In concluding I argue that conceiving of high-quality jury deliberation as centrally dependent on getting instructions more comprehensible fails to recognize the fundamental judgment task that juries have. Being a good juror involves navigating communication dilemmas. Attending to the judge’s preliminary jury instructing, the paper argues, requires jurors honoring multiple principles that may be in tension.

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On some communicatively salient complexities of knowledge asymmetries in a jury trial

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Adversarial, Ludic and Ritual Nature of Discursive Interactions in a Trial

Adversarial, Ludic and Ritual Nature of Discursive Interactions in a Trial

Popularizing in legal discourse: What efforts do Russian judges make to facilitate juror’s comprehension of law-related contents?

Preliminary jury instructing: a dilemmatic communication practice

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