Legal Transcript Analysis

1)      With relevance to the Legal Transcript Text and relevant ideas from language, explore how language is used to assert power.

 

Because the text is set in a courtroom we can predict that during the conversation the Bar has more power over the witness (Mr Neil) this could be due to the Bar’s instrumental power. In this text the Bar also has Political power over the witness and because of this he has the ability to ask questions and be answered, immediately giving him more power, however the judge in this scenario would have the most power and although we do no hear from him we can assume that he is there and has the highest form of instrumental power.

One clear example of the Bar being the more dominant speaker is when he is asking for clarification and states: ‘’ is that because the police have been to see you so many times Mr Neil‘’.  The use of the intensifier ‘’so’’ to modify ‘’many’’ shows that Mr Neil has been trouble with the police before, by doing this the Bar could be achieving his primary purpose of trying to convince the judge that Mr Neil is guilty of the crime he is convicted for.  ‘’so many times’’ can also be seen as ironic and therefore it might show that the Bar is mocking Mr Neil. The use of bald on record strategy and flouting Grice’s Maxim of manner, to assert his power as well as lowering Mr Neil’s own status could be seen as unprofessional. However ‘’so many time’’ is also a common idiom and in this case the Bar might just be using to get his point across. The emphasis on the idiom and Mr Neil’s name makes the implicature seem mocking.  By starting the interrogative with ‘’is that because’’ the Bar has made it harder for Mr Neil to answer the question, the conjunction ‘’because’’ means that Mr Neil can only answer ‘’yes’’ or ‘’no’’ to the question. This means that the Bar isn’t giving Mr Neil much chance to defend himself, this makes the Bar more powerful and it is helping him achieve his primary purpose.

Earlier in the text before the Bar could finish his interrogative, Mr Neil interrupts with a response: ‘’ I don’t think they did no.’’ The overlap could be seen as competitive however because we know that Mr Neil is trying to defend himself we could assume that he is eager in trying to prove his innocence and so interrupts the Bar. Mr Neil could have also thought that the Bar has finished his question; ‘’you can’t remember whether they came to see you’’ could’ve been the end of the question whether ‘’or no’’ was added the intonation would have been the same. Based on this we can assume that Mr Neil was not trying to take power away from the Bar and from this we can say that the overlap might actually be in fact cooperative. The dynamic verb ''think'' shows that Mr Neil is unsure and is trying not to impilicate himself by making such a bold declarative, this makes it less powerful and in doing so Mr Neil is also lessening his power. The determiner  ‘’no’’ emphasizes the main subject of his declarative, which is that to the best of his knowledge the police hasn't been to see him.