Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-fcbfl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-08T01:15:31.598Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“I think that's not an assumption you ought to make”: Challenging presuppositions in inquiry testimony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2006

SUSAN EHRLICH  and
JACK SIDNELL
SUSAN EHRLICH
Affiliation:
Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada, [email protected]
JACK SIDNELL
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 100 George Street, Toronto, ON M5S SG3, Canada, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines data drawn from a 2001 Ontario (Canada) provincial inquiry into the deaths of seven people as a result of water contamination in a small Ontario town. The examination focuses on question-answer sequences in which the premier of Ontario, Michael Harris, attempted to resist lawyers' attempts to control and restrict his responses. In particular, on the basis of the data it is argued that the power of cross-examining lawyers does not reside solely in their ability to ask controlling and restrictive questions of witnesses, but rather is crucially dependent on their ability to compel witnesses to produce straightforward, or “type-conforming,” answers to these controlling and restrictive questions. The witness whose testimony is analyzed was not compelled to produce answers that logically conformed to the form of the lawyers' questions (i.e., “yes” or “no”) and, as a result, often usurped control over the topical agenda of the proceedings. In this sense, the present work builds on Eades's conclusion that “we cannot rely on question form to discover how witnesses are controlled.”A previous version of this article was presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 15, Newcastle, U.K., in April 2004. We thank audience members at that conference and two reviewers for Language in Society for comments on previous versions. The research on which this article is based was funded in part by a SSHRCC Regular Research Grant (#410-2000-1330) to the first author.

Keywords

courtroom discourseconversation analysispresuppositionquestion-answer sequences
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 5 , November 2006 , pp. 655 - 676
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. Maxwell, & Drew, Paul (1979). Order in court: The organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London: Macmillan; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Berk-Seligson, Susan (1999). The impact of court interpreting on the coerciveness of leading questions. Forensic Linguistics 6:30–51.Google Scholar
Button, Graham (1992). Answers as interactional products: Two sequential practices used in interviews. In Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings, 212–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Chilton, Paul (2004). Analyzing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Clayman, Steven, & Heritage, John (2002). The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Conley, John, & O'Barr, William (1998). Just words: Law, language and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cotterill, Janet (2003). Language and power in court: A linguistic analysis of the O. J. Simpson trial. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Danet, B.; Hoffman, K.; Kermish, N.; Rafn, H.; & Stayman, D. (1980). An ethnography of questioning. In Roger Shuy & A. Shnukal (eds.), Language use and the uses of language, 222–234. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Drew, Paul (1992). Contested evidence in courtroom examination: The case of a trial for rape. In Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings, 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, Paul, & Heritage, John (1992). Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eades, Diana (2000). I don't think it's an answer to the question: Silencing Aboriginal witnesses in court. Language in Society 29:161–195.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Susan (2001). Representing rape: Language and sexual consent. London: Routledge.
Gibbons, John (2003). Forensic linguistics: An introduction to language in the justice system. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grice, H. P. (1989 [1981]). Presupposition and conversational implicature. In his Studies in the way of words, 269–282. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harris, Sandra (1984). Questions as a mode of control in magistrates' courts. International Journal of Sociology of Language 49:5–28.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul, & Kiparsky, Carol (1971). Fact. In D. Steinberg & L. Jakobovits (eds.), Semantics: An interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, Stephen (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John (1977). Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perkel, Colin N. (2002). Well of lies: The Walkerton water tragedy. Toronto: McLelland & Stewart.
Sidnell, Jack (2004). There's risks in everything: Extreme case formulations and accountability in inquiry testimony. Discourse & Society 15:745–666.Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack (forthcoming). The design and positioning of questions in inquiry testimony. In Alice Freed & Susan Ehrlich (eds.), “Why do you ask?”: The function of questions in institutional discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.
Raymond, Geoffrey (2003). Grammar and social organization: Yes/No type interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review 68:939–966.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun (1991). Racism and the press. London: Routledge.
Walker, Anne Graffam (1987). Linguistic manipulation, power and the legal setting. In Leah Kedar (ed.), Power through discourse, 57–80. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Woodbury, Hannah (1984). The strategic use of questions in court. Semiotica 48:197–228.Google Scholar