Narrative expansions as defensive practices in courtroom testimony
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Renata Galatolo is Researcher at the Department of Communication Disciplines at Bologna University, where she teaches Psychology of Communication and Discursive Psychology. Her main research interests concern the study of natural occurring interactions in institutional and professional settings. She has published several articles on miscommunication phenomena, conflict talk, storytelling in conversation, and direct reported speech. She is co-editor, with G. Pallotti, of the book
La conversazione (1999).
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Paul Drew is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. His research in conversation analysis focuses on communicative practices underlying social interaction, and on interaction in workplace and institutional settings such as courtrooms and medical consultations (see, e.g.,
Talk at Work , co-edited with John Heritage). He is currently investigating affliation and disaffliation in talk-in-interaction, as part of a six-nation European (ESF-funded) project coordinated by Anna Lindstrom at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Abstract
This article analyses witnesses' expanded answers to yes/no questions during direct and cross examination. Among possible types of expansions, the analysis focuses on ‘narrative expansions’, i.e., on expansions that go beyond the framework of the question. In the trial context, witnesses' expansions serve as a defensive resource, by allowing the witness to create an additional interactional space that counterbalances the asymmetry in favor of legal professionals typical of trial interaction. The general aim of the article, which utilizes data taken from an Italian murder trial that took place in 1998, is to show how expansions accomplish this defensive task. The analysis focuses on the discursive devices witnesses adopt in order to accomplish their expansions after having produced the requested minimal answer: prosodic or verbal devices that can appear as associated or isolated. The analysis identifies two specific interactional functions of these expansions, that of further substantiating information provided in the first part of the answer, and that of contextualizing the information conveyed in the initial answer. Witnesses seem to make recourse to this tactic out of a desire to change or mitigate the version of facts conveyed by the questions.
About the authors
Renata Galatolo is Researcher at the Department of Communication Disciplines at Bologna University, where she teaches Psychology of Communication and Discursive Psychology. Her main research interests concern the study of natural occurring interactions in institutional and professional settings. She has published several articles on miscommunication phenomena, conflict talk, storytelling in conversation, and direct reported speech. She is co-editor, with G. Pallotti, of the book La conversazione (1999).
Paul Drew is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. His research in conversation analysis focuses on communicative practices underlying social interaction, and on interaction in workplace and institutional settings such as courtrooms and medical consultations (see, e.g., Talk at Work, co-edited with John Heritage). He is currently investigating affliation and disaffliation in talk-in-interaction, as part of a six-nation European (ESF-funded) project coordinated by Anna Lindstrom at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Epistemological positioning and evidentiality in English news discourse: A text-driven approach
- Narrative expansions as defensive practices in courtroom testimony
- Stance taking in conversation: From subjectivity to intersubjectivity
- ‘I’ll be the sun': From reported speech to semiotic remediation practices
- ‘So what is the problem this book addresses?’: Interactions in academic book reviews
- Divide and rule: The power of adversarial subjectivities in the discourse of divorce
- Index of articles in Volume 26 (2006)
Articles in the same Issue
- Epistemological positioning and evidentiality in English news discourse: A text-driven approach
- Narrative expansions as defensive practices in courtroom testimony
- Stance taking in conversation: From subjectivity to intersubjectivity
- ‘I’ll be the sun': From reported speech to semiotic remediation practices
- ‘So what is the problem this book addresses?’: Interactions in academic book reviews
- Divide and rule: The power of adversarial subjectivities in the discourse of divorce
- Index of articles in Volume 26 (2006)
