Roger W. Shuy

After the Interview

This article is concerned with “after the interview,” a “strip” of time (Goffman 1974, p. 10) between the end of the formal interview and the culmination of leave-taking rituals. Although there is a considerable and growing literature on qualitative interviewing (Arksey and Knight 1999; Kvale 1996; Rubin and Rubin 1995; Weiss 1994), and some corridor talk about the meaning of “off the record” post-interview comments, this topic has received little attention in the published literature (but see DeSantis 1980 and Wenger 2001). And we think it is an important one, since it illuminates the interviewees interpretation of the interviewer and interview process, and highlights aspects of the meaning of the topic, and of the interviewer, to the respondent (which is, after all, the endpoint of the qualitative interviewing method). Further, the question of what constitutes after the interview throws into relief the question of what is an interview.

How a Judge's Voir Dire can Teach a Jury What to Say

A common questioning event in the legal setting is the judges voir dire (interview) of prospective jurors to determine their beliefs and predispositions about such matters as capital punishment. This paper analyzes the voir dires of 14 prospective jurors in a death penalty case in a midwestern US city. In four of the 14 interviews, linguistic analysis of the judges questions reveals that he is actually guiding the jurors, probably unintentionally, in how to respond. The linguistic factors that lead to this conclusion include question sequencing, semantic marking, escalation of semantic intensity, face-threatening, interruption, rephrasing and evaluation. The power asymmetry of the interaction, the pressures of time and unskilled question-asking may be the sources of the judges problem. Whatever the sources are, however, the evidence is clear that the judges questioning style caused some jurors to change their position on the death penalty during their voir dires.

Secretary Bennett's Teaching: An Argument for Responsive Teaching.

Abstract This sociolinguistic analysis of Secretary Bennetts teaching makes use of five discourse analysis routines or tools: setting, question sequencing, topic, response, and evaluation analysis. It finds that Bennetts style is rather good recitation teaching but that this class was better suited for responsive teaching, in which the teacher assists students to the upper end of what Vygotsky calls the zone of proximal development. Question sequencing reveals that male students dominated in responding to “why” questions, that only male students were challenged in their responses, and that only females were given neutral evaluations. In a class in which the students evidence ability to provide accurate facts, to see causal relationships, and infer appropriately, a responsive teaching style would have been more effective than the recitation model used here.

Language and the Law

The application of linguistics to other areas of life has occurred in a somewhat natural, if haphazard, fashion. The first and most obvious applications were to education (first and second language learning, teaching, and testing), lexicography, translation, and speech therapy (Crystal 1981). There has been rather long standing interest in other fields, such as medical interaction (Mishler 1984; cf., van Naerssen and Kaplan elsewhere in this volume) and religious language (Samarin 1976), but it has been only within the past few years that increasing amounts of linguistic knowledge have been applied to the field of law.

Language in the American Courtroom

One of the most promising connections that linguistics can make to other fields is to the legal arena, primarily because much of the work in law is done in language and it is often largely about language, either spoken or written. For example, lawsuits, indictments, pleadings, briefs, legal opinions, and, of course, laws and statutes are all revealed and preserved in written language. Courtroom appearances and testimony, although presented orally, end up in written form and even oral evidence gets transformed into written transcripts. We beg in with the observation that language and law are close bedfellows. 1. The Beginnings The development of any new area of any discipline usually begins when practitioners of that field get involved with it in a noticeable way. In forensic linguistics, this development started when various linguists made appearances in the courtroom setting. But even ‘courtroom setting’ has different implications and meanings. For example, in Europe, it is often judges who call upon experts to analyze evidence. Expert reports are read by judges, who may, but usually do not, ask the experts to testify about their reports at trial. This contrasts with the common procedure in the United States, where experts are called by one side of the case and give testimony on behalf of that side. Whether the European or American system obtains, linguists appear to have begun getting involved in court cases in earnest sometime around the early 1980s. Hannes Kniffka wrote expert linguistic reports in Germany during that period (Kniffka 1996), as did Malcolm Coulthard in England. Roger Shuy has testified at US trials since 1979. Public records ar e not available about the use of forensic linguists in other parts of the world but it is likely that they came later than the early 1980s. History is unclear about exactly when linguists began to work with lawyers on specific law cases, but w e ha ve wr itten evidence that one of the first Western linguists to get involved was Jan Svartvik, who published an analysis of the altered police statements in the case of Timothy John Evans, who was hanged 15 years earlier (and posthumously pardoned) for murdering his wife and baby (Svartvik 1968). By the 1970s and 1980s many linguists had gotten involved in law cases in both Europe and the United States, and

The language of defamation cases

Introduction SECTION I: DEFAMATION LAW: WHERE LINGUISTICS CAN HELP 1. Fighting Over Defamatory Language 2. How Linguistics Fits into the Picture SECTION II: DEFAMATION BATTLES IN THE MEDIA 3. A Sixth-Grade Teacher Goes After the Local Press 4. Widow of a Murdered Man Sues a Local TV Station 5. A Religious Leader, the TV Media, and the FCC 6. Las Vegas Headliner Wayne Newton Sues NBC 7. Verbal Duels Between Linguistics Experts in a Case Brought by an Ohio Supreme Court Justice Against a Newspaper SECTION III: DEFAMATION DISPUTES IN THE FIELD OF MEDICINE 8. Optometrists vs. Opthamologists 9. Otolaryngologists vs. Plastic Surgeons 10. Infighting in the Hair Care Products Industry 11. A Policy Holder Sues Her Insurance Company 12. An Employee Sues Her Employer 13. A Corporation Files a Lawsuit Against a Union 14. So Are We Making Any Progress? References Cited Case Citations

Context as the Highest Standard of Semantics: A Lawsuit Involving the Meaning of "Accuracy" in Accounting

or ambiguous evidence with which the legal procedure works. Perhaps most commonly of all, however, is that attorneys and the courts have a great deal of trouble with the language used to interpret, explicate, or define either the law or the evidence. One such case involved a civil suit brought by one corporation against another corporation. Both companies were in the same business, and the event which brought about the suit was the sale of one unit or franchise of

UNEXPECTED BY-PRODUCTS OF FIELDWORK

the rest of their lives. Some of us are still testing out the idea, wondering if our early interests will ever ripen into full-blown excitement. It is a well-known fact, however, that whenever linguists get together they tend to talk linguistics into the wee hours of the morning. Small talk, the news, daily activities, encounters with sales people-all turn into linguistic events somehow to those who are bitten with the ability to observe. Once this corner has been turned, there is really no going back. That which was merely interesting suddenly has become obsessive and exciting. The important purpose of this paper is to point out the joys of discourse fieldwork and to illustrate, as convincingly as possible, what can bring about the turning of that corner. I do not hesitate to claim that it was actual fieldwork experience which made all the difference to me personally in linguistics. As a new graduate student in linguistics and a recent emigre from English literature, my second term found me in a course in linguistic geography, taught by Raven McDavid, whose view of teaching was heavily influenced by the throw-them-in-the-water-and-let-them-learn-to-swim approach. Thus, having just finished a masters degree in literature, in which I spent long hours poring over what literary critics said that various authors meant by certain lines, I was unceremoniously dumped on the doorstep of induction. Professor McDavid handed us an Atlas questionnaire and told us to go do an interview. Out of this humble, and humbling, experience, a right-angle turn was made in the direction of my life and I have never been the same since. It is not that this interview was well done--or even mildly successful. In fact, as I recall, I botched it all rather badly. What I discovered, however, was worth all the humbling that the process offered. I think it was at this time that I got the first real glimpse of the living, dynamic, social, variable, exciting thing that language could be. This had not come about as a result of reading Gleasons Introduction (1955) or Bloomfields Language (1933), although both of these are wondrous works, indeed, which richly deserve to be read today. The fieldwork experience had a far greater effect on me; it made all the difference.

Deceit, distress and false imprisonment: the anatomy of a car sales event

We seldom get the opportunity to record what actually goes on in a car sales event. A deaf customer, who kept all the hand-written notes made by the salesperson and himself, provided such evidence in his civil lawsuit against the car dealer. The linguist was called in originally to validate the sequencing of the 101 written slips of paper that constituted such evidence. Using speech event analysis along with various context clues, the sequence of the notes was established. In addition, speech act analysis and topic-response analysis made clear the respective agendas of the customer and the salesperson, since a major part of the dispute concerned whether the customer was a serious, potential buyer or merely a price shopper, seeking information at that time. This article outlines the linguistic analysis that was presented at trial.

The Battles of Linguistics and Law

Trademark battles conventionally begin with two parties claiming the right to use certain words or expressions. Such cases end either with one party gaining the legal right to use the words and expressions and the other party being prohibited from doing so, or with both parties authorized to have full access to the marks. The authority of law is then granted accordingly.