Temporal density in courtroom interaction: Constraints on the recovery of past events in legal discourse

Abstract

Data for the present study were drawn from an ongoing investigation of a murder trial, naturalistically observed throughout a six‐month period, including pretrial hearings, and grounded in the microanalytic, turn‐by‐turn analysis of a courtroom transcript exceeding 1,000 pages. Attention is given to how courtroom interaction may be understood as a temporally organized and constrained social activity. Guided by formal legal procedures, lawyers and witnesses collaborate by time‐traveling into past times and places, through present interrogation and testimony, for future deliberation and sentencing. These temporal and spatial shifts are similar to more casual conversations, yet also unique due to the restrictions imposed on questioning and storifying practices. An examination of these comparisons leads not only to an enhanced understanding of the communicative functions and language devices used to time‐travel within the judicial system, but also reveals the inherent tensions involved as the temporally dense past is transformed from a knowledge resource into the predominant topic of the present. A closer inspection of the past‐present interface suggests that present ambiguities of natural language often confound the distinction between factual and perceived versions of past realities.

Notes

Wayne A Beach is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication, San Diego State University