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I don't think it's an answer to the question: Silencing Aboriginal witnesses in court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2000

DIANA EADES
DIANA EADES
Affiliation:
Department of English as a Second Language, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA, [email protected]
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Abstract

This study investigates the evidence of Australian Aboriginal witnesses in a New South Wales country courthouse, focusing on how and why witnesses are silenced in examination-in-chief, both by their own lawyer and by the judge. The analysis questions the assumption in previous sociolinguistic research that the syntactic form of questions is inherently related to the way in which power is exercised in court. Further, the article highlights how witness silencing in these cases appears to occur particularly in situations where legal professionals are seriously ignorant about fundamental aspects of the everyday cultural values and practices of Aboriginal people. Sociolinguistic microanalysis gives a glimpse of one aspect of the process by which the powerlessness and domination of Aboriginal people is perpetuated through the legal system.

Keywords

Courtroom languageinteractional sociolinguisticsintercultural communicationdiscourse analysisAustraliaAboriginal English
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 2000 , pp. 161 - 195
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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