Gonzalez-Martinez2006

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Gonzalez-Martinez2006
BibType ARTICLE
Key Gonzalez-Martinez2006
Author(s) Esther González-Martínez
Title The Interweaving of Talk and Text in a French Criminal Pretrial Hearing
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, pre-trial hearings
Publisher
Year 2006
Language
City
Month
Journal Research on Language and Social Interaction
Volume 39
Number 3
Pages 229–261
URL Link
DOI 10.1207/s15327973rlsi3903_3
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In this article, I analyze the talk between a suspect and a prosecutor during a pretrial hearing within the framework of the French criminal procedure of comparution immediate (immediate trial). In this hearing, according to the law, the prosecutor is supposed to verify the suspect's identity, inform the suspect of the charges against him or her, and write down the suspect's statements if he or she chooses to make any. However, most of this meeting is taken up by a prosecutor-led discussion during which interlocutors display accounts of the alleged facts, produce series of questions and answers, dispute issues related to the case, and formulate the suspect's statement in written form. I show that this statement, overseen carefully by the prosecutor, emerges through the interweaving of different sequential activities, with talk and text reflexively constituting one another, in a restrictive speech exchange system fitted to the prosecutor's institutional orientations mainly with respect to building the case against the suspect.

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