Jennifer Andrus

Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese.”

This article explores the sociolinguistic history of a U.S. city. On the basis of historical research, ethnography, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistic interviews, the authors describe how a set of linguistic features that were once not noticed at all, then used and heard primarily as markers of socioeconomic class, have come to be linked increasingly to place and “enregistered” as a dialect called “Pittsburghese.” To explain how this has come about, the authors draw on the semiotic concept of “orders of indexicality.” They suggest that social and geographical mobility during the latter half of the twentieth century has played a crucial role in the process. They model a particularistic approach to linguistic and ideological change that is sensitive not only to ideas about language that circulate in the media but also to the life experiences of particular speakers; and they show how an understanding of linguistic variation, language attitudes, and the stylized performance of dialect is enhanced by exploring the historical and ideological processes that make resources for these practices available.

Beyond texts in context: Recontextualization and the co-production of texts and contexts in the legal discourse, excited utterance exception to hearsay

The excited utterance exception to hearsay from the US Federal Rules of Evidence (US Courts, 2006: Section 8) is a special kind of reported speech — the repetition of an utterance that reports an event, made prior to the courtroom interaction, in response to exciting circumstances, to a passive third party. This reported speech and the rules that govern it provide insight into the discursive relationship between text and context. This article uses the excited utterance exception to develop a theory of recontextualization, building on research that shows that texts do not merely constitute contexts, nor do contexts neatly hold and inform the texts embedded in them. Contexts are complex and subjective matrices made up of utterances, texts, actions and events, and these matrices are themselves open to recontextualization. This analysis shows that legal discourse simplifies and constrains both texts and contexts, and positions them causally in the recursive and simultaneous processes of entextualization and recontextualization.

A Legal Discourse of Transparency: Discursive Agency and Domestic Violence in the Technical Discourse of the Excited Utterance Exception to Hearsay

This article analyzes the effects of a transparency view of language that is implicit in some technical discourses. Using a legal concept, the excited utterance exception to hearsay, as an exemplary discourse, I show that this view of language is predicated on social norms rather than empirical standards. Indeed, I argue, the measurement of accuracy using an empirical standard creates a situation in which the speakers rhetorical concerns and the context can be ignored.

Entextualizing domestic violence : language ideology and violence against women in the Anglo-American hearsay principle

Acknowledgements Note on trial citation format Introduction: Language Ideology in the Hearsay Doctrine and the Modern Excited Utterance Exception to Hearsay Chapter 1: Legal Discourse of Domestic Violence: Language Ideology and Trustworthiness Part I: Anglo-American Law and the In/admissibility of Hearsay Chapter 2: Legal Empiricism in/and the Language Ideology of Hearsay Chapter 3: Social Discourses about Domestic Violence and Hearsay: Interdiscursivity and Indexicality in the US Supreme Court Part II: The Excited Utterance Exception in US v. Hadley Chapter 4: Making the Excited Utterance Legally Intelligible: Shifting Audiences, Contexts, and Speakers Chapter 5: The Attribution and Disattribution of Discursive Agency in the Excited Utterance Exception to Hearsay Chapter 6: Conclusions: Language Ideology and the Legal Accounting for Domestic Violence

Language ideology, fractal recursivity, and discursive agency in the legal construction of linguistic evidence

This article analyzes the language ideology (Silverstein 1979; Woolard & Schieffelin 1994) circulated in Section 8 of the United States Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE), focusing on the consequences to discursive agency when this language ideology is used to appropriate an utterance for use as evidence. Section 8 of the FRE, or the hearsay rule, bars the testimonial, in-court repetition of second-hand statements. The excited utterance exception to hearsay admits an utterance as long as it was made by an excited speaker, while s/he was under the sway of an exciting event, which the excited utterance must also report. This rule explicitly trusts spontaneous speech, entextualizing it as a trustworthy account of an event, using the reasoning that such an utterance is not made by a speaker capable of self-reflection. I show that this language ideology problematically links discursive agency (Butler 1997; Medina 2006) with an untruthful speaker-role. Using the concept of fractal recursivity (Irvine & Gal 2000), I argue that the presuppositions embedded and circulated metadiscursively in this rule of evidence effectively constitute a speaker without legally “recognizable” discursive agency. This effect is the most noticeable and the most consequential when the excited utterance exception is used to appropriate the speech of women who have been the victims of domestic violence. Ultimately I argue that discursive agency is a feature of language ideology. (Discursive agency, legal discourse, language ideology, evidence, metadiscourse, domestic violence) *