ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some examples of constraints on interaction in courtroom discourse, especially examples involving question-and-answer routines between lawyers and witnesses and the funnelling of witness narratives towards legally relevant points. Lay advocates are also responsible for cross-examining witnesses. Cross-examination is a highly specialised genre, however, and unrepresented litigants often fail to see the point of allowing their opponent to speak. For reasons of legal consistency, an unrepresented litigant is held to the same evidentiary standards as a lawyer in a trial. The verbal behaviour of such a litigant, however, will deviate from the lawyer's professional norm. The chapter explores how although witnesses are expected to give their testimony in their own words, often they do not get to narrate their story freely. Some of those restrictions are outlined in a widely cited legal and anthropological field study by William O'Barr and John Conley.
