Style and Discourse
Friday 1:30-3:00

• Susan Blackwell, University of Birmingham, UK

Taking a closer look at "look": discourse markers in disputed texts

It has often been argued that the words which bear the least lexical information are those least subject to conscious control by the speaker. If this is the case, then "function" words and discourse markers may be ofmore diagnostic value to forensic linguists than "content" words in evaluating claims about the authenticity of alleged utterances.

However, the potential usefulness of such words is complicated by issues of transcription. Discourse markers may be missing from a disputed text because they were not transcribed or even perceived by the "scribe" rather than because the text did not originate in spoken discourse.

This paper will examine the distribution of discourse markers such as"look", "well" and "you know" in some disputed texts and their undisputed counterparts, and will compare these distributions with those encountered in spoken corpora of English. It will attempt to assess the degree to which various discourse markers are perceived and transcribed by the British police and by British court reporters, and the significance which can consequently be attached to them by the forensic linguist.

• Malcolm Coulthard University of Birmingham, UK

Restating statements

A series of high profile cases in England, where long term convictionshave eventually been over turned on Appeal, have rested largely or entirely on disputed confessions. This paper will look at the crucial confession by Pat Molloy in the so-called Bridgewater Four case. The paper will use this statement as a basis to discuss some of the methodologies available to linguists in such cases of disputed authorship and the problems of subsequently presenting and arguing the linguistic evidence in court.

• Bruce Fraser, Boston University

Threatening revisited

The act of threatening has been studied by numerous researchers who have posited such distinctions an direct vs. indirect threats, conditional vs. non-conditional threats, animate vs. inanimate threats, threats involving verbal action vs. threats involving physical action, and threats to a person vs. threats to authority. In addition, threats have been distinguish from warnings on the one hand and promises on the other, and attempts have been made to categorize certain linguistic forms as more or less threatening.

In this paper I present a coherent picture of threatening, integrating both previous research and present ideas as they apply to the field of labor arbitration.