Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony
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Magdalena Szczyrbak
Abstract
This chapter considers patterns of evasive behaviour in expert testimony with regard to medical evidence in a criminal trial. Building on earlier work on emotive communication, it explains how linguistic avoidance is realised in the cross-examination of expert witnesses, in addition to identifying differences between the testimony of a cooperative witness and that of an uncooperative witness. In the analysis, avoidance is considered in relation to six dimensions: certainty, volitionality, proximity, evaluation, specificity, as well as size/degree/ quantity. The chapter argues that expert witnesses’ avoidance of full epistemic commitment to uncomfortable concepts and/or propositions - similarly to stress responses to perceived or real danger in the physical environment - can be conceptualised not only as withdrawal (“flight” mode) but also, in the case of combative witnesses, as approach (“fight” mode).
Abstract
This chapter considers patterns of evasive behaviour in expert testimony with regard to medical evidence in a criminal trial. Building on earlier work on emotive communication, it explains how linguistic avoidance is realised in the cross-examination of expert witnesses, in addition to identifying differences between the testimony of a cooperative witness and that of an uncooperative witness. In the analysis, avoidance is considered in relation to six dimensions: certainty, volitionality, proximity, evaluation, specificity, as well as size/degree/ quantity. The chapter argues that expert witnesses’ avoidance of full epistemic commitment to uncomfortable concepts and/or propositions - similarly to stress responses to perceived or real danger in the physical environment - can be conceptualised not only as withdrawal (“flight” mode) but also, in the case of combative witnesses, as approach (“fight” mode).
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
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Part I: (Just) words
-
Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
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Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
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Part II: More than (just) words
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Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
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Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
-
Part I: (Just) words
-
Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
-
Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
-
Part II: More than (just) words
-
Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
-
Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
