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Discourse & Society
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How a Judge's Voir Dire can Teach a Jury What to Say

Roger W. Shuy

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

A common questioning event in the legal setting is the judge's voir dire (interview) of prospective jurors to determine their beliefs and predispositions about such matters as capital punishment. This paper analyzes the voir dires of 14 prospective jurors in a death penalty case in a midwestern US city. In four of the 14 interviews, linguistic analysis of the judge's questions reveals that he is actually guiding the jurors, probably unintentionally, in how to respond. The linguistic factors that lead to this conclusion include question sequencing, semantic marking, escalation of semantic intensity, face-threatening, interruption, rephrasing and evaluation. The power asymmetry of the interaction, the pressures of time and unskilled question-asking may be the sources of the judge's problem. Whatever the sources are, however, the evidence is clear that the judge's questioning style caused some jurors to change their position on the death penalty during their voir dires.

Key Words: death penalty • evaluating • face-threatening • interruption • mitigated disagreement • rephrasing • semantic intensity • semantic markings • voir dire

Discourse & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2, 207-222 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/0957926595006002004
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[Abstract] [PDF]