Using legal language as a non-lawyer: Danish lay judges’ linguistic strategies during criminal trials
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Using legal language as a non-lawyer: Danish lay judges’ linguistic strategies during criminal trials. / Johansen, Louise Victoria.
In: Nordic Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2018, p. 227-246.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Using legal language as a non-lawyer: Danish lay judges’ linguistic strategies during criminal trials
AU - Johansen, Louise Victoria
N1 - Special Issue 2 Forensic Linguistics: European Perspectives
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Lay participation in criminal trials has primarily been studied in common law systems, thereby mainly focusing on the separate role of juries. These studies have provided detailed accounts of language use between jurors during deliberation as well as their use of storytelling techniques and common-sense reasoning in decision-making. However, only few studies have focused on the linguistic learning processes that lay judges in other legal systems go through when they deliberate cases together with a professional judge both in reaching a verdict and in sentencing. In Denmark, lay judges are appointed for a period of four years, and this paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of lay judges and their growing experience with interactions in the deliberation room. It argues that lay judges learn to use legal language in order to strengthen their arguments vis-à-vis the professional judges. Lay judges feel that their influence is dependent on how well they master new, legal context-specific ways of expressing themselves, a point that may run counter to their legitimation as lay voices in an otherwise formalized judiciary.
AB - Lay participation in criminal trials has primarily been studied in common law systems, thereby mainly focusing on the separate role of juries. These studies have provided detailed accounts of language use between jurors during deliberation as well as their use of storytelling techniques and common-sense reasoning in decision-making. However, only few studies have focused on the linguistic learning processes that lay judges in other legal systems go through when they deliberate cases together with a professional judge both in reaching a verdict and in sentencing. In Denmark, lay judges are appointed for a period of four years, and this paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of lay judges and their growing experience with interactions in the deliberation room. It argues that lay judges learn to use legal language in order to strengthen their arguments vis-à-vis the professional judges. Lay judges feel that their influence is dependent on how well they master new, legal context-specific ways of expressing themselves, a point that may run counter to their legitimation as lay voices in an otherwise formalized judiciary.
KW - communities of practice
KW - criminal trials
KW - discourse analysis
KW - lay judges
KW - legal language
KW - situated learning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053684848&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0332586518000124
DO - 10.1017/S0332586518000124
M3 - Journal article
VL - 41
SP - 227
EP - 246
JO - Nordic Journal of Linguistics
JF - Nordic Journal of Linguistics
SN - 0332-5865
IS - 2
ER -
ID: 191556270