Preserving Alternative Versions

Abstract

In courtroom cross-examinations, the adversarial nature of joint participation is revealed through analysis of participants' methods for presenting and preserving alternative versions of past events. By focusing on video recordings and transcriptions of question-answer sequences comprising murder and attempted rape trials, 3 distinct methods employed by witnesses and lawyers are examined: (a) witnesses using “I don't know” and “I don't remember,” (b) attorneys' use of prior testimony to induce a witness to change an answer, and (c) attorneys and witnesses challenging alternative versions of reality through insinuations and lexical choice, such as repeated words and pauses. These routinized methods are recruited by interactants as resources for creating and maintaining discrepant orientations to motives and alleged prior actions. Making explicit the interactional and thus achieved character of cross-examination yields an appreciation for the methodical ordering of courtroom speech exchange systems and enhances understandings of the coconstruction of social realities. By locating institutional constraints at work in practical actions, the distinctiveness of both legal and everyday noninstitutional discourse also becomes specifiable.