Manzo1993
| Manzo1993 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Manzo1993 |
| Author(s) | John Manzo |
| Title | Jurors' narratives of personal experience in deliberation talk |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Courtroom Interaction, Deliberation, Narratives, Personal Experience, Rhetoric |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 1993 |
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| Journal | Text |
| Volume | 13 |
| Number | 2 |
| Pages | 267–290 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1515/text.1.1993.13.2.267 |
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Abstract
The jury system occupies an important place in American legal culture, yet little is known concerning the operations of actual juries. Much of social scientific analysis, for example, ignores jurors' actual practices in deliberation in favor of 'variable analytic' approaches that emphasize the influences on deliberation outcomes. Jurisprudential treatments of juries evaluate juries based on ideal-typical notions of 'correct' practice. For example, the U.S. legal system, through the wording of instructions to jurors and assertions of the importance of 'legal reasoning' attempts to disallow jurors' consideration of personal experience in deliberations. However, analysis of the talk of actual jurors—a type of analysis that suspends social scientific interest in 'variables'—demonstrates that, while jurors do tell stories of personal experience, these stories are of achieved relevance to the jury's task. Analysis reveals, first, that the narratives are highly organized phenomena; second, that stories of personal experience are not unrelated to, but rather help constitute, legal talk and the jury's legal work; and third, that jurors' personal narratives have rhetorical uses that jurors can marshall in defense of their legal positions and as a means of convincing other jurors to side with them.
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