Ehrlich2006

Ehrlich2006
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Ehrlich2006
Author(s)	Susan Ehrlich, Jack Sidnell
Title	I think that's not an assumption you ought to make: Challenging presuppositions in inquiry testimony
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Legal, Courtroom Interaction, Questioning, Testimony, Presuppositions
Publisher
Year	2006
Language
City
Month
Journal	Language in Society
Volume	35
Number	5
Pages	655-676
URL	Link
DOI	http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404506060313
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

Abstract

This article examines data drawn from a 2001 Ontario (Canada) provincial inquiry into the deaths of seven people as a result of water contamination in a small Ontario town. The examination focuses on question-answer sequences in which the premier of Ontario, Michael Harris, attempted to resist lawyers' attempts to control and restrict his responses. In particular, on the basis of the data it is argued that the power of cross-examining lawyers does not reside solely in their ability to ask controlling and restrictive questions of witnesses, but rather is crucially dependent on their ability to compel witnesses to produce straightforward, or “type-conforming,” answers to these controlling and restrictive questions. The witness whose testimony is analyzed was not compelled to produce answers that logically conformed to the form of the lawyers' questions (i.e., “yes” or “no”) and, as a result, often usurped control over the topical agenda of the proceedings. In this sense, the present work builds on Eades's conclusion that “we cannot rely on question form to discover how witnesses are controlled.” a

Notes