Judges’ deviations from norm-based direct speech in court

Abstract

This article presents a small-scale empirical study of legal discourse which focuses on the use of direct and indirect speech in Danish interpreter-mediated court proceedings. The study analyses the practices of three Danish judges in three different interpreted proceedings. The primary objective of the paper is to study the potential correlation between the use of direct and indirect speech styles and certain stages of court proceedings. These stages are defined and classified in terms of explicit prescriptive legal norms ascribable to the participants in Danish court proceedings, acting in accordance with a predefined style of interaction (direct speech). In addition, the study investigates whether what the judges say about their speech style corresponds with their actual language use in court. The techniques combined in the study are survey research, participant observation and descriptive analysis based on transcriptions of authentic data from three audio-recorded criminal cases conducted by district courts in Denmark.