ABSTRACT
Over the past decade or so, the author has investigated the discourse of trials and judicial decisions in sexual assault cases in both Canada and the United States. The author has attempted to show how language use is crucial to understanding the way that gendered inequalities are created and reproduced in the legal system. Because the author relies on public documents and audiotapes for her data, securing the informed consent of speakers is not necessary. Historically, in both Canada and the United States, sexual violence cases were subject to “special evidence rules”: strict and unique rules of evidence that focused far more attention on the complainant’s behavior than was possible in other kinds of criminal cases. In general, perhaps the primary implication of the author's ethical dilemma is that the securing of informed consent in sociolinguistics needs to be extended to research situations and research dimensions that are not typically understood as requiring it.
