In this article, we are interested in the relationship between linguistic style and credibility in the legal system as it pertains to the testimony of a complainant and an accused in a Canadian rape trial, R v. Wagar. While Conley... more
In this article, we are interested in the relationship between linguistic style and credibility in the legal system as it pertains to the testimony of a complainant and an accused in a Canadian rape trial, R v. Wagar. While Conley and O’Barr’s pioneering work on this topic argued that powerful and assertive speech styles were more credible than powerless and deferential styles in the courtroom, we suggest that these kinds of indexical associations are neither stable nor monolithic across a speech community. Indeed, in the sexual assault trial we examine here, the complainant’s powerful speech style seemed to undermine her credibility because she was perceived to be too ‘assertive’ to be a victim. We argue that the complainant was caught between two paradoxical ideologies: although a powerful speech style, in line with Conley and O’Barr’s claims, may be associated with credibility in the courtroom, the witness’s use of such a style was regarded as inconsistent with her status as a vi...
Language policy forms an integral part of constructing, upholding, and contesting the status and social space of languages. Such policies may perpetuate social inequalities between speakers of different languages in multilingual societies... more
Language policy forms an integral part of constructing, upholding, and contesting the status and social space of languages. Such policies may perpetuate social inequalities between speakers of different languages in multilingual societies (Tollefson, 1991; Van Dijk, 1993; Es-cobar Alméciga, 2013; Ready, 2018). Policies that typically address society as a whole may also reference language use of migrant populations. The current study analyzes integration policies in Spain at the federal and regional levels in the autonomous communities of Madrid and Catalonia, and examines how these policies shape and characterize the role of language practices as they relate to immigrants' participation in Spanish society. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989), this study relies on intratextual and intertextual analyses to examine how discourse is produced and reproduced throughout national policy in comparison to policies of two of Spain's most populated autonomous commu...
