I think that's not an assumption you ought to make

Challenging presuppositions in inquiry testimony

Bibliographic Data

ID2887409
AuthorsSusan Ehrlich (York University), Jack Sidnell (0000-0002-7546-872X, University of Toronto)
Year2006
Volume35
Issue05
Pages655-676
Publication date2006-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404506060313
OpenAlexW2120603548
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited11

This article examines data drawn from a 2001 Ontario (Canada) provincial inquiry into the deaths of seven people as a result of water contamination in a small Ontario town. The examination focuses on question-answer sequences in which the premier of Ontario, Michael Harris, attempted to resist lawyers' attempts to control and restrict his responses. In particular, on the basis of the data it is argued that the power of cross-examining lawyers does not reside solely in their ability to ask controlling and restrictive questions of witnesses, but rather is crucially dependent on their ability to compel witnesses to produce straightforward, or “type-conforming,” answers to these controlling and restrictive questions. The witness whose testimony is analyzed was not compelled to produce answers that logically conformed to the form of the lawyers' questions (i.e., “yes” or “no”) and, as a result, often usurped control over the topical agenda of the proceedings. In this sense, the present work builds on Eades's conclusion that “we cannot rely on question form to discover how witnesses are controlled.”A previous version of this article was presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 15, Newcastle, U.K., in April 2004. We thank audience members at that conference and two reviewers for Language in Society for comments on previous versions. The research on which this article is based was funded in part by a SSHRCC Regular Research Grant (#410-2000-1330) to the first author

Epistemology · Presupposition · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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