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 -