This study analyses an important but unstudied site of legal–lay communication: the website discourse of a small claims court. I describe six interactional problems that litigants in small claims court face that the official court metadiscourse, i.e., the court website, does not ably prepare participants for. Problems include: 1) addressees vary enormously in assumed education levels, 2) facework challenges misidentify focal parties, 3) the speech genre is more Q and A than a presentation, 4) limited attention is given to distinguishing fairness from legality, 5) the downside of extensive metadiscourse is not recognised and 6) the variety among judges is given little attention. These problems, I show, are shaped by the existence of two partly contradictory ideals embedded in the practice of small claims interaction, as well as the metadiscourse regarding what counts as good communication. One ideal of small claims court is to see it as a place where disputes can be addressed fairly by an impartial arbitrator. The other ideal is to see small claims as a place where legal rules are applied to disputes to yield a legal solution. The article concludes with suggestions about how to manage the competing ideals.
{"title":"Delivering justice: case study of a small claims court metadiscourse","authors":"K. Tracy","doi":"10.1558/IJSLL.41592","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/IJSLL.41592","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyses an important but unstudied site of legal–lay communication: the website discourse of a small claims court. I describe six interactional problems that litigants in small claims court face that the official court metadiscourse, i.e., the court website, does not ably prepare participants for. Problems include: 1) addressees vary enormously in assumed education levels, 2) facework challenges misidentify focal parties, 3) the speech genre is more Q and A than a presentation, 4) limited attention is given to distinguishing fairness from legality, 5) the downside of extensive metadiscourse is not recognised and 6) the variety among judges is given little attention. These problems, I show, are shaped by the existence of two partly contradictory ideals embedded in the practice of small claims interaction, as well as the metadiscourse regarding what counts as good communication. One ideal of small claims court is to see it as a place where disputes can be addressed fairly by an impartial arbitrator. The other ideal is to see small claims as a place where legal rules are applied to disputes to yield a legal solution. The article concludes with suggestions about how to manage the competing ideals.","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49622865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strategic Indeterminacy in the Law by David Lanius (2019)","authors":"Hesam Mohamadi","doi":"10.1558/IJSLL.19198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/IJSLL.19198","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43402776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article describes two experiments investigating listeners’ accuracy in estimation of speaker age as well as the listeners’ confidence that their estimates were correct. In Experiment 1, listeners made age estimates based on spontaneous speech. In Experiment 2, the estimates were based on read speech. The purpose of the study was to explore differences in accuracy and confidence depending on speech material, speaker characteristics (gender and age) and listener gender. Another purpose was to examine the realism in the listeners’ confidence ratings in estimations of spontaneous versus read speech. No differences in accuracy or confidence were found due to speech material type. Although accuracy was higher in estimates of male speakers, confidence was higher in estimates of female speakers, effects that were also dependent on speaker age. Possible acoustic and linguistic explanations behind the age and gender effects are discussed. As the correlation between confidence and accuracy was weak, it was concluded that confidence should not be relied on as an indicator of accuracy in estimation of speaker age.
{"title":"Accuracy and confidence in estimation of speaker age","authors":"Skoog Waller, Sara Maria Birgitta","doi":"10.1558/IJSLL.39700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/IJSLL.39700","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes two experiments investigating listeners’ accuracy in estimation of speaker age as well as the listeners’ confidence that their estimates were correct. In Experiment 1, listeners made age estimates based on spontaneous speech. In Experiment 2, the estimates were based on read speech. The purpose of the study was to explore differences in accuracy and confidence depending on speech material, speaker characteristics (gender and age) and listener gender. Another purpose was to examine the realism in the listeners’ confidence ratings in estimations of spontaneous versus read speech. No differences in accuracy or confidence were found due to speech material type. Although accuracy was higher in estimates of male speakers, confidence was higher in estimates of female speakers, effects that were also dependent on speaker age. Possible acoustic and linguistic explanations behind the age and gender effects are discussed. As the correlation between confidence and accuracy was weak, it was concluded that confidence should not be relied on as an indicator of accuracy in estimation of speaker age.","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42978877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The relative contributions of static and dynamic formant representations to speaker-specificity were investigated in conversational speech and in two vowels varying in inherent spectral change. Using polynomial fits, the contribution of dynamic formant coefficients to speaker-specificity relative to that of the formant intercept was investigated in the diphthongal vowel [ei] taken from English and Dutch conversational speech. The [ei] tokens were sampled from various linguistic contexts and analysed in an LR approach. Results show that formant dynamics contain speaker-specific information in conversational speech even though the high contextual variation seems to reduce its effect relative to that reported by earlier work. Vowels differ in inherent dynamicity and therefore, the added value of dynamic formant information to speaker-specificity was also compared between vowels differing in inherent spectral change. Using Dutch data, the contribution of formant dynamics to speaker-specificity was compared between [ei] and [a?] tokens produced by the same speakers. Formant dynamics in conversational speech only contributed to speaker-specificity in the diphthong [ei], not in the monophthong [a?].
{"title":"The contribution of dynamic versus static formant information in conversational speech","authors":"W. Heeren","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.41058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.41058","url":null,"abstract":"The relative contributions of static and dynamic formant representations to speaker-specificity were investigated in conversational speech and in two vowels varying in inherent spectral change. Using polynomial fits, the contribution of dynamic formant coefficients to speaker-specificity relative to that of the formant intercept was investigated in the diphthongal vowel [ei] taken from English and Dutch conversational speech. The [ei] tokens were sampled from various linguistic contexts and analysed in an LR approach. Results show that formant dynamics contain speaker-specific information in conversational speech even though the high contextual variation seems to reduce its effect relative to that reported by earlier work. Vowels differ in inherent dynamicity and therefore, the added value of dynamic formant information to speaker-specificity was also compared between vowels differing in inherent spectral change. Using Dutch data, the contribution of formant dynamics to speaker-specificity was compared between [ei] and [a?] tokens produced by the same speakers. Formant dynamics in conversational speech only contributed to speaker-specificity in the diphthong [ei], not in the monophthong [a?].","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47908443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Otter’s Journey through Indigenous Language and Law Lindsay Keegitah Borrows (2018)","authors":"J. Leung","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.41977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.41977","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":"27 1","pages":"103-106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46379863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Analysis of Legal Cases: A Narrative Approach Flora Di Donato (2019)","authors":"Qurrat-ul-ain Mukhtar","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.41978","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.41978","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":"27 1","pages":"107-111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45552047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This thesis aims at studying personal pronouns from two perspectives: Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL henceforth) and Cognitive Linguistics. The experiential metafunction of SFL is used to determine if different speakers assign different participant roles to personal pronouns to serve their different ends. The interpersonal metafunction of SFL is used to check if the use of personal pronouns can reflect the social status of speakers and detect whether they are credible in their speech. As far as Cognitive Linguistics is concerned, this thesis attempts to apply cognitive models like the Attention Model (Langacker, 1987 & 2008) and the Force Dynamics Model (Talmy, 2000) to see if personal pronouns can be used as a tool of exertion of power in discourse. The corpus of this study belongs to a discourse that is an ‘exercise of power and of power over meaning’ (Goodrich, 1987: 2): the legal discourse. This corpus pertains to two genres of legal discourse: Life Insurance Contracts and Court Hearing Transcripts. These genres are chosen because one of the important goals of this thesis is to discover whether the variable of genre affects the distribution of personal pronouns and their participant roles in legal discourse. In order to achieve the aforementioned aims, a variety of quantitative and qualitative tools are employed in the methodology of this thesis. The UAM CorpusTool is used to annotate all the instances of personal pronouns according to their context in the corpus, the participant roles assigned to them and their sources. After annotation, the statistical tools of frequency distribution and the Chi-square test are used to test the hypotheses of this thesis. On the qualitative paradigm, an in-depth study of the use of some personal pronouns using the SFL and Cognitive Linguistics approaches for interpretation is carried out. It has been concluded that the choice of certain personal pronouns and of certain participant roles assigned to them is genre specific. Indeed, the genre of the corpus dictates certain preferences of reference density and of processes and participant roles. These preferences are also dependent on the aims of each genre. It has also been found out that the power dynamics holding between the different participants of each genre and between the different types of participants in court hearings affect the choice of personal pronouns and the participant roles assigned to them. The results have led to the conclusion that this choice is also influenced by the different objectives these different participants seek to achieve in different legal settings. Normal 0 false false false fr-TN X-NONE AR-SA
{"title":"A cognitive and systemic functional approach of the use of personal pronouns in legal discourse: life insurance contracts and court hearings as a case study","authors":"Ameni Hlioui","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.41340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.41340","url":null,"abstract":"This thesis aims at studying personal pronouns from two perspectives: Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL henceforth) and Cognitive Linguistics. The experiential metafunction of SFL is used to determine if different speakers assign different participant roles to personal pronouns to serve their different ends. The interpersonal metafunction of SFL is used to check if the use of personal pronouns can reflect the social status of speakers and detect whether they are credible in their speech. As far as Cognitive Linguistics is concerned, this thesis attempts to apply cognitive models like the Attention Model (Langacker, 1987 & 2008) and the Force Dynamics Model (Talmy, 2000) to see if personal pronouns can be used as a tool of exertion of power in discourse. The corpus of this study belongs to a discourse that is an ‘exercise of power and of power over meaning’ (Goodrich, 1987: 2): the legal discourse. This corpus pertains to two genres of legal discourse: Life Insurance Contracts and Court Hearing Transcripts. These genres are chosen because one of the important goals of this thesis is to discover whether the variable of genre affects the distribution of personal pronouns and their participant roles in legal discourse. In order to achieve the aforementioned aims, a variety of quantitative and qualitative tools are employed in the methodology of this thesis. The UAM CorpusTool is used to annotate all the instances of personal pronouns according to their context in the corpus, the participant roles assigned to them and their sources. After annotation, the statistical tools of frequency distribution and the Chi-square test are used to test the hypotheses of this thesis. On the qualitative paradigm, an in-depth study of the use of some personal pronouns using the SFL and Cognitive Linguistics approaches for interpretation is carried out. It has been concluded that the choice of certain personal pronouns and of certain participant roles assigned to them is genre specific. Indeed, the genre of the corpus dictates certain preferences of reference density and of processes and participant roles. These preferences are also dependent on the aims of each genre. It has also been found out that the power dynamics holding between the different participants of each genre and between the different types of participants in court hearings affect the choice of personal pronouns and the participant roles assigned to them. The results have led to the conclusion that this choice is also influenced by the different objectives these different participants seek to achieve in different legal settings. Normal 0 false false false fr-TN X-NONE AR-SA","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":"27 1","pages":"99-101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48285710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dominic Watt, Philip Harrison, Vincent Hughes, Peter French, Carmen Llamas, A. Braun, Duncan Robertson
{"title":"Assessing the effects of accent-mismatched reference population databases on the performance of an automatic speaker recognition system","authors":"Dominic Watt, Philip Harrison, Vincent Hughes, Peter French, Carmen Llamas, A. Braun, Duncan Robertson","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.41466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.41466","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47003040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article reports findings from a study of police interviews of people suspected of having committed relatively minor criminal offences, in a police station in England. The data comprise audio-recorded investigative interviews which were analysed using conversation analysis. It is focused on a communicative practice employed by police officers while questioning suspects. This practice is to ‘formulate’ what the suspect has just said; formulations are a means of summarising the suspect’s evidence in a particular phase of questioning, in such a way as to represent the suspect’s own words. Formulations, as a practice in talk-in-interaction, enable police officers to a) summarise the upshot of what a suspect has said during a period or phase of questioning, b) attribute this summary directly to a suspect’s ‘own words’, c) construct a suspect’s account (confirmation) as legally relevant, and which can d) elicit from the suspect a form of admission. Formulations are employed as a mechanism to rework prior descriptions and utterances by transforming and elaborating them and consolidating their legal relevance. Through this practice, police officers manage to attribute legal labels to what suspects have said during the interview, to their evidence (e.g. as denying, admitting, telling, etc.) as well as to the character of the incidents or events in question (e.g. assault, breach of harassment warning, criminal damage, arson). Formulating, therefore, is an interactional practice through which key legal work is accomplished in police interviews with suspects in England. It is a device that constitutes the fabric of law-in-action.
{"title":"The fabric of law-in-action: ‘formulating’ the suspect’s account during police interviews in England","authors":"Fabio Ferraz de Almeida, P. Drew","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.38527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.38527","url":null,"abstract":"This article reports findings from a study of police interviews of people suspected of having committed relatively minor criminal offences, in a police station in England. The data comprise audio-recorded investigative interviews which were analysed using conversation analysis. It is focused on a communicative practice employed by police officers while questioning suspects. This practice is to ‘formulate’ what the suspect has just said; formulations are a means of summarising the suspect’s evidence in a particular phase of questioning, in such a way as to represent the suspect’s own words. Formulations, as a practice in talk-in-interaction, enable police officers to a) summarise the upshot of what a suspect has said during a period or phase of questioning, b) attribute this summary directly to a suspect’s ‘own words’, c) construct a suspect’s account (confirmation) as legally relevant, and which can d) elicit from the suspect a form of admission. Formulations are employed as a mechanism to rework prior descriptions and utterances by transforming and elaborating them and consolidating their legal relevance. Through this practice, police officers manage to attribute legal labels to what suspects have said during the interview, to their evidence (e.g. as denying, admitting, telling, etc.) as well as to the character of the incidents or events in question (e.g. assault, breach of harassment warning, criminal damage, arson). Formulating, therefore, is an interactional practice through which key legal work is accomplished in police interviews with suspects in England. It is a device that constitutes the fabric of law-in-action.","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":"114 1-2","pages":"35-58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41308369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A phonetic case study on prosodic variability in suicidal emergency calls","authors":"Lauri Tavi, S. Werner","doi":"10.1558/ijsll.39667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.39667","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43843,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Speech Language and the Law","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45983079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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