ABSTRACT
The chapter by Richard Wilson strongly underpins the argument for a more profound scientific interpretation of the cognitive and linguistic type of propaganda evidence, most particularly through expert witnesses as conduits of specific knowledge and information the international criminal trials ought to utilize in most cases. As Wilson states, “Adjudicating crimes where the main evidence is a speech act or acts requires a nuanced appreciation of local languages and the cultural context of their usage to establish what specific utterances mean, what the utterances encouraged the listener to do and what the consequences of the utterances were.” Apart from the methodological recommendation as to the source of expertise, Wilson offers two particularly relevant case studies in some of the landmark international trials involving various components of propaganda. The first concerns the sociolinguistic evidence provided by Mathias Ruzindana to the ICTR in the Akayesu and Nahimana et al. cases, whereas the second addresses the sociological method of content analysis of different categories of propagandistic utterances submitted by Anthony Oberschall in the ICTY’s case of Vojislav Šešelj. While the former played a critical role in decoding the language used by the propagandists and the génocidaire in Rwanda, the latter had very little, if any, impact on the trial judges’ assessment of the mens rea evidence originating from the Accused himself. Wilson’s chapter makes a compelling case in favor of a cautious but necessary engagement of social and cognitive scientists in international criminal trials, particularly those whose forensic expertise can contribute to the critically important understanding of the contextually most intricate aspects of culture and language-based evidence.
