17.394, Review: Pragmatics/Corpus Ling/Forensic Ling: Archer(2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-394. Mon Feb 06 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.394, Review: Pragmatics/Corpus Ling/Forensic Ling: Archer(2005)

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1)
Date: 02-Feb-2006
From: Mary Gruber < mcgruber at uchicago.edu >
Subject: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640?1760) 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:53:47
From: Mary Gruber < mcgruber at uchicago.edu >
Subject: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640?1760) 
 

AUTHOR: Archer, Dawn
TITLE: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640-1760)
SUBTITLE: A sociopragmatic analysis
SERIES: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 135
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2007.html 

Mary C. Gruber, doctoral candidate, Department of Linguistics, 
University of Chicago

OVERVIEW

Archer employs a discourse analytic approach that blends socio-
pragmatic analysis and corpus methodology for her study of questions 
and answers in the Early Modern English (EModE) courtroom.  Her 
study responds to the following questions: what kinds of questions do 
different courtroom actors ask in the EModE courtroom and to what 
extent do these patterns change between 1640 and 1760? What 
kinds of answers do different questions posed by different actors 
receive, and how does the contextual position of a question pattern 
with the kinds of answers that are received?  Given that judges, 
prosecutors, defendants (and, in the later years covered by the 
corpus, defense attorneys) could all ask questions in this time period, 
Archer is especially interested in the connections between speaker 
role, the types of questions asked, and the answers that were 
received.

Methodology
The data for this study constitute a subsection of the Corpus of 
English Dialogues (CED) which was compiled by Merja Kytö and 
Jonathan Culpeper and includes 6 text types from the period 1560-
1760.  The sociopragmatic corpus (SPC) is an annotated subsection 
of the CED consisting of 2 text types - drama and trial proceedings - 
from the years 1640-1760.  The present study focuses on the 16 trial 
proceedings of the SPC.  This corpus consists of 121,189 words.  The 
120 years covered by the SPC trial proceedings are further broken 
down into 3 periods (Period 3 (1640-1679), Period 4 (1680-1719), 
and Period 5 (1720-1760)), which correspond with the same 
subperiods used by the CED.  The 16 trials are evenly distributed 
across the 3 periods, with 6 trials occurring in Period 3, and 5 each in 
Periods 4 and 5.  The SPC was annotated by Culpeper and Archer 
with sociopragmatic information: for every utterance, the speaker and 
addressee(s) were labeled as to their age, status, gender, and role.  
Four specific roles were identified: activity role (e.g., defendant), 
kinship role (e.g., father), social role (e.g., servant) and dramatic role 
(e.g., villain).

In the current study, Archer introduces her system of additional 
annotation for the 16 trial proceedings. She annotated the questions 
and answers in the SPC trial proceedings on the basis of 
their 'interactional intent', their 'force' and, for questions only, 
their '(grammatical) form'.  Archer's decision to code the data 
according to these categories is explained in Chapter 2, where she 
reviews studies of questions and answers from the perspective of 
semantics, pragmatics, speech act theory, conversation analysis and 
discourse analysis and explains her decision to largely follow 
Stenström (1984)'s program which blends principles of conversation 
analysis with the Birmingham approach to discourse analysis.  

The category of 'Interactional intent' relates to the position an 
utterance occupies in the discourse and it reflects what the speaker 
intends to accomplish in structural or interactional terms at a particular 
point in the discourse (120).  Examples include: INITIATION (which 
includes eliciting devices such as questions, requests, and 
requirements), RESPONSE (which includes answers, replies, 
acceptances, and refusals), and FOLLOW UP (which includes 
comments, feedback), and combinations of the above categories (e.g., 
FOLLOW UP-INITIATION, RESPONSE-INITIATION).  By identifying 
utterances in this way, Archer hopes to differentiate between a turn at 
talk and what the speaker actually does with that turn.  In this way, 
she can account for those utterances in which the speaker does more 
than one thing in the same turn.   

A question or answer's 'force' coding assesses the illocutionary force 
of the utterance.  Here Archer draws upon traditional speech act 
theory, but takes steps to compensate for the ways in which it has 
been criticized.  For example, she addresses speech act theory's 
traditional inability to recognize that utterances can be ambiguous with 
regard to force and that the same utterance can have more than one 
illocutionary force by adding specific codes which mark the presence 
of multiple and/or indeterminate forces.  Archer also heads off 
concerns that her use of speech act labels reflects her assumption 
that these categories existed as real language functions in the years 
1640-1760 (128).  Rather, she argues, these particular categories 
have been reconstructed on the basis of the data and have been 
corroborated with other sources to ensure their contextual/historical 
relevance.  Examples of 'force' codes include: COUNSEL (e.g., 
caution, warn), QUESTION (e.g., ask (about), inquire (into), 
interrogate), REQUEST (e.g., beg, beseech, desire), and INFORM 
(e.g., affirm, assert, claim, deny).  

As mentioned above, the 'form' field applies only to prototypical 
questions: ''those utterances whose linguistic structure is that of the 
interrogative, and which are heard by the hearer/addressee as 
requesting some kind of verbal and/or non-verbal response'' (130).  
Archer codes question forms in two ways: 1) by identifying the 
grammatical question type (e.g., WH-interrogative, negative-WH, polar-
interrogative, tag question, and rhetorical question); and 2) by coding 
the actual form in the text (e.g., WHAT, WHERE, HOW MANY, etc.).  
In this way, Archer seeks to be able link patterns of question use with 
particular speakers, with particular positions in the texts, and with 
types of answers received.  

Contextualization
Archer frames her study in a discussion of the context of the 
courtroom--both modern and EModE--and the different ways that this 
particular context constrains the language of courtroom actors.  She 
begins by describing the ideology of the adversarial system currently 
in practice in England and Wales, noting that ''truth is assumed to 
emerge from direct confrontation'' (Lakoff 1989: 123) and that 
coercive questioning is a natural consequence of this system.  Other 
types of speaker constraints come from specific word choices in 
questions (cf. Loftus and Palmer (1974)), lawyers' use of a continuum 
of coercive question-types, and by the opportunity (or lack thereof) to 
provide more than a fragmented answer in response to questions (83-
84).  Archer then shifts to ways in which courtroom practices in the 
EModE period differed from those of today.  First, the playlist of 
courtroom actors, and as a result, these actors' roles, changed 
significantly between 1640 and 1760.  In 1640, while it was not 
uncommon for prosecutors to represent the Crown in treason cases, 
defendants had no representation in court (85-91).  According to 
Beattie (1986) it wasn't until 1696 that defendants received counsel 
for treason cases and the 1730s until defense counsel (and 
prosecution counsel) were extended to more ordinary criminal cases.  
As a result, in the early portion of the SPC defendants questioned 
witnesses and other courtroom actors.  Once defense and 
prosecution counsel became standard actors in court proceedings, 
the role of the judge underwent a change as well.  

Archer also reviews studies of forms and functions of questions in the 
EModE period based on the language of dramas, particularly 
Wikberg's (1975) Shakespearean language study.  Here Archer 
discusses the patterning of do-periphrasis, wh-question forms, and 
the functions of modal verbs which differed from the patterns of 
Modern English.  She also makes reference to earlier work (Archer 
2002) on the patterns of questions and answers in transcripts of the 
Salem witch trials (99-103).

Findings
Two major findings of this study are:  
1. The change in courtroom actors (i.e., the appearance of counsel for 
defendants) led to a change in the courtroom actors' questioning 
behavior during the time period studied: defendants, who conducted 
their own defense in Period 3 (1640-1679), asked fewer questions 
with the appearance of counsel during Period 4 (1680-1719).  (A 
number of defendants continued to ask at least some questions of 
their own, however, even with the presence of counsel.)  As counsel 
for both sides began asking information-seeking questions during 
Periods 4 and 5 (1680-1760), judges posed fewer questions to 
defendants and witnesses and the questions they did ask tended to 
be clarification-seeking rather than information-seeking.  The 
questions posed by counsel (for both sides) in Periods 4 and 5 tended 
to progress from open-ended to increasingly more controlling.  Thus, 
Archer's study documents the emergence of one of the hallmarks of 
the adversarial system that exists today in England, Wales, and the 
U.S.
 
2. While studies of modern-day courtroom practices view questioners 
as occupying inherently controlling positions in the discourse, Archer 
observes that EModE courtroom procedures in which defendants 
could question witnesses and other courtroom actors present a 
unique opportunity to test the limits of questioner-as-controller 
hypotheses.  Archer finds that the questions posed by defendants 
received different kinds of answers than those posed by other (more 
powerful) courtroom actors.  Thus, ''... although [defendants] had 
a 'legitimate' right to request a response, they lacked the 'coercive 
power' to shape responses in the courtroom. Consequently, they often 
struggled/failed to procure the relevant information/ clarification/ 
confirmation/ action to secure their freedom.'' (2)  Archer also 
addresses the general issue of the conductivity of questions.  She 
concludes that ''the conducive force (or 'restrictiveness') of question-
types is not just dependent on the real or apparent dominance of the 
speakers, but on (i) the specific questioning function of the 
interrogative (e.g. clarification-seeking as opposed to information-
seeking), (ii) the questioner's goal[s], and (iii) the interrogative's 
positioning in the questioning sequence.'' (157-158)  As to the last 
point, for example, Archer found that both polar interrogatives and wh-
interrogatives posed at the beginning of questioning sequences 
tended to receive longer responses than the same questions that 
occurred mid-sequence.

EVALUATION

By choosing a period in which courtroom actors and roles underwent 
significant changes, Archer chooses a rich site for analysis and is able 
to contribute not only to the fields of historical pragmatics and 
sociolinguistics, but also to historical studies of the EModE courtroom.  
Her attention to the micro-practices of questioning by judges and 
especially attorneys capture what appear to be the earliest stages of 
the aggressive courtroom cross-examination strategies common to 
adversarial systems of today.  

In her discussion of the context of EModE courtrooms and the lack of 
representation for defendants, Archer cites Hawkins' (1721) 
justification for this imbalance: 
[I]t requires no manner of Skill to make a plain and honest Defence, 
which in Cases of this Kind is always the best; the Simplicity and 
Innocence, artless and ingenuous Behaviour of one whose 
Conscience acquits him, having something in it more moving and 
convincing than the highest Eloquence of Person speaking in a cause 
not their own. (1721: 400)

This window into language ideologies of the EModE court has 
interesting echoes in the more recent (1961) language of the United 
States Supreme Court with regard to the right of allocution.  (The right 
of allocution gives defendants the right to address the court before 
sentence is imposed; it is required in federal court and is standard 
practice in over half of all American jurisdictions (McGautha v. 
California (1971)).  In Green v. U.S (1961), the Court writes: ''The 
most persuasive counsel may not be able to speak for a defendant as 
the defendant might, with halting eloquence, speak for himself.''  
These examples suggest that this ideology regarding what constitutes 
effective and/or persuasive defendant courtroom language has 
particular staying power.  Even more interesting, however, is the 
mismatch between ideology and practice which appears to endure as 
well.  As Archer observes, defendants didn't fare so well in the EModE 
courtroom.  She writes: ''it seems to have been an exceptional 
prisoner indeed who asked probing questions or who spoke effectively 
to the jury on his/her own behalf.'' (89)  When we jump ahead over 
250 years to U.S. courtrooms, the question of whether defendants 
speak effectively on their own behalf still stands (cf. Natapoff 2005).  
The defendant allocutions which I am analyzing for my dissertation are 
filled with false starts and hesitations, but whether these 
constitute ''halting eloquence'' is unclear: O'Barr (1982), for example, 
showed that hesitations, along with other indexes of powerless 
speech, correlate with perceptions of the speaker as less trustworthy 
and less intelligent.  Even if a judge were moved by a defendant's 
illocution, however, the federal sentencing guidelines, which are still 
treated as authoritative (though no longer mandatory according to 
U.S. v. Booker (2005)), give judges little leeway to exercise their 
discretion (cf. Stith and Cabranes 1998).

Archer's historical pragmatic corpus study bears interesting fruit.  Part 
of the challenge of conducting a study like this stems from the 
condition of working with a limited number of texts.  This inevitably 
leads to low raw numbers in many of the features that are compared.  
In addition, some of the figures to be compared consist of a relatively 
sizable number of tokens that were produced by only a few 
defendants (e.g., 7 of the 10 'requires' in Table 27 were produced by 
Charles I (277)), or came from a single trial (i.e., the court martial of 
Captain Ambrose (264)).  Archer has taken this problem as an 
invitation for further research and refers to a forthcoming chapter in 
which she addresses this issue.  For readers of this book, however, it 
might have been more helpful to position the discussion of some 
figures' atypicality earlier in the book.  At a few points the numbers 
and language of the charts don't match that of the corresponding 
discussion (203, 224), and some additional glossing of the sailing 
jargon that pervades the examples from the Ambrose trial would also 
have been helpful.  Constraints on space seem to have prohibited the 
reproduction of the full trial transcripts.  The interesting examples 
excerpted in Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom may 
very well inspire readers to seek out the complete transcripts 
themselves.

REFERENCES

Archer, Dawn. (forthcoming) ''Developing a more detailed picture of 
the Early Modern English courtroom: Data and methodological issues 
facing historical pragmatics''. In Methods of Historical Pragmatics. 
Recovering speaker meaning and reader inference, edited by S.M. 
Fitzmaurice & I. Taavitsainen. Topics in English Linguistics Series. 
Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Archer, Dawn. 2002. ''Can innocent people be guilty?'' A 
sociopragmatic analysis of examination transcripts from the Salem 
Witchcraft Trials''. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 3, 1: 1-30.

Beattie, John. 1986. Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Green v. U.S., 365 U.S. 301 (1961). 

Hawkins, William. 1721. A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown: or a 
system of the principal matters, relating to that subject, digested under 
their proper heads. Vol. II. London: J. Walthoe, Jr.

Lakoff, Robin. 1989. Talking Power: The Politics of Language. USA: 
Basic Books.

Loftus, Elizabeth and J. C. Palmer. 1974. ''Reconstruction of 
automobile destruction: an example of the interaction between 
language and memory.'' Journal of Learning and Verbal Behavior 13: 
585-589.

McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183 (1971).

Natapoff, Alexandra. 2005. ''Speechless: The silencing of criminal 
defendants.'' New York University Law Review 80: 1449-1504.

O'Barr, William M. 1982. Linguistic Evidence. Language, Power, and 
Strategy in the Courtroom. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc.

Stenström, Anna-Britta. 1988. ''Questioning in conversation.'' 
Questions and Questioning, edited by M. Meyer, Grundlagen Der 
Kommunikation Bibliothek Sausabe, Foundations of Communication 
Library Edition. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.

Stith, Kate and José Cabranes. 1998. Fear of Judging. Sentencing 
Guidelines in the Federal Courts. Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press.

U.S. v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005).

Wikberg, Kay. 1975. Yes-No Questions and Answers in 
Shakespeare's Plays: A Study in Text Linguistics. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mary C. Gruber is a doctoral candidate in the Department of 
Linguistics at the University of Chicago.  Her dissertation examines the 
apology narratives of 50 defendants at their sentencing hearings.  In 
addition to naturally occurring apologies, she is interested in affective 
meaning more broadly and in context effects on language.  She hopes 
to go on the job market next year.





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