ABSTRACT
We can approach the study of legal English of the past in a number of ways. We can trace the development of legal English in general, as Mellinkoff (1963) and Tiersma (2000) do (albeit from different disciplinary perspectives). We can trace the development of linguistic elements that are associated with legal English: for example, Moore (2006) investigates the written discourse marker, ‘vidilect’, which appears to have developed a genre-specific quotative usage in slander depositions (akin to using ‘namely’, followed by a direct utterance attributed to the witness/complainant). We can also draw from English extant trial records to investigate the discoursal strategies of the historical courtroom at particular points in time: for example, Kryk-Kastovsky (2000) investigates the turn-taking strategies of what she terms the ‘interrogators’ and the ‘interrogated’ in two 1685 trials, The Trial of Titus Oates and The Trial of Lady Alice Lisle. In this chapter, I will also be outlining the characteristics of courtroom interaction in the English courtroom – but diachronically – so that I can document:
(i.) the way(s) in which courtroom interaction both shaped and was shaped by legal legislation during this period, and
(ii.) the changing roles of the primary historical courtroom ‘players’, the judges, the lawyers, the defendants and the witnesses.
