Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T16:21:14.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Cultural Defense as Courtroom Drama: The Enactment of Identity, Sameness, and Difference in Criminal Trial Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Sigurd D'hondt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces cultural defense as a discursive realization‐in‐context, rather than as a legal‐doctrinal figure, in a Belgian real‐life criminal trial. In examining the defense plea for a Turkish man accused of battery, three discursive techniques are identified for making Cultural Otherness visible: de‐individualization, reporting preparatory meetings with the client, and supplying ethnographic “expert” knowledge that transforms the client into the “object” of discourse. Apart from providing information about the defendant's background, cultural defenses also involve particular modes of behaviorally orienting toward the defendant in the courtroom. Otherness must be enacted in court, and to this end attorneys often actively disaffiliate themselves from their clients, marking them as impenetrable, mute, and unemancipated. In doing so, they draw extensively upon the indexical and iconic modalities of talk, which is convenient because the matrix of sameness and difference on which the cultural defense is founded escapes formal legal definition.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Winter 2010 , pp. 67 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2010 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Anderson, T. J. 1999. The Netherlands Criminal Justice System: An Audit Model of Decision Making. In Complex Cases: Perspectives on the Netherlands Criminal Justice System, ed. Malsch, M. and Nijboer, J. F., 47–68. Amsterdam: Thela Thesis.Google Scholar
Atkinson, J. Maxwell, and Heritage, John. 1984. Transcript Notation. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. Atkinson, J. Maxwell and Heritage, John, ix–xvi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter, and Di Luzio, Aldo, eds. 1992. The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Verschueren, Jef. 1998. Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles, and Bauman, Richard. 1992. Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2:131–72.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles, and Mantini‐Briggs, Clara. 2000. “Bad Mothers” and the Threat to Civil Society: Race, Cultural Reasoning, and the Institutionalization of Social Inequality in a Venezuelan Infanticide Trial. Law & Social Inquiry 25 (2): 299–354.Google Scholar
Chiu, Diana C. 1994. The Cultural Defense: Beyond Exclusion, Assimilation, and Guilty Liberalism. California Law Review 82:1053–124.Google Scholar
Coleman, Doriane L. 1996. Individualizing Justice through Multiculturalism: The Liberals' Dilemma. Columbia Law Review 96:1093–1167.Google Scholar
Conley, John, and O'Barr, William. 1990. Rules Versus Relationships. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cuypers, Daniël, Kusters, Joke, Overbeeke, Adriaan, Vrielink, Jogchum, and Foblets, Marie‐Claire. 2004. Gelijkheid en verschil: Over (h)erkenning in het recht [Sameness and Difference: About Recognition in the Law]. In Wanneer wordt vreemd, vreemd [When does Strange Become Strange] , ed. Timmerman, Christiane, Lodewyckx, Ina, Vanheule, Dirk and Wets, Johan, 71–108. Leuven: Acco.Google Scholar
D'hondt, Sigurd. 2009a. Others on Trial: The Construction of Cultural Otherness in Belgian First Instance Criminal Courtrooms. Journal of Pragmatics 41:806–28.Google Scholar
D'hondt, Sigurd. 2009b. Good Cops, Bad Cops: Intertextuality, Agency and Structure in Criminal Trial Discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42:249–75.Google Scholar
D'hondt, Sigurd, Beyens, Kristel, Machiels, Bieke, Meeuwis, Michael, Blommaert, Jan and Verschueren, Jef. 2004. Interculturele communicatie in rechtbanken [Intercultural Communication in Courtrooms]. Brussel: Politeia.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Heritage, John, eds. 1992. Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dupret, Baudouin. 2006. Le Jugement en Action [Judgment in Action] . Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, ed. 2004. A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, and Goodwin, Charles, eds. 1992. Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, and Brenneis, Donald, eds. 1986. Special Issue: The Audience as Co‐Author. Text 6 (3): 239–347.Google Scholar
Eades, Diana. 1996. Legal Recognition of Cultural Differences in Communication: The Case of Robyn Kina. Language & Communication 16 (3): 215–27.Google Scholar
Eades, Diana. 2002. I Don't Think It's an Answer to the Question: Silencing Aboriginal Witnesses in Court. Language in Society 29:61–95.Google Scholar
Eades, Diana. 2006. Lexical Struggle in Court: Aboriginal Australians Versus the State. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (2): 153–80.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1961. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving, ed. 1981. Footing. In Forms of Talk, 124–59. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Golding, Martin P. 2002. The Cultural Defense. Ratio Juris 4:146–58.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 2007. Interactive Footing. In Reporting Talk, ed. Holt, Elizabeth and Clift, Rebecca, 16–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, and Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. 2004. Participation. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Duranti, Alessandro, 222–43. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. 1990. He‐Said‐She‐Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 2001. Contextualization and Ideology in Intercultural Communication. In Culture in Communication, ed. Di Luzio, Aldo, Günthner, Susanne, and Orletti, Franca, 35–53. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Komter, Martha L. 1994. Accusations and Defenses in Courtroom Interaction. Discourse and Society 5:165–87.Google Scholar
Levine, Kay L. 2003. Negotiating the Boundaries of Crime and Culture: A Sociolegal Perspective on Cultural Defense Strategies. Law & Social Inquiry 28 (1): 39–86.Google Scholar
Loeb, Elizabeth. 2005. Book review of The Cultural Defense , by Alice Renteln. Anthropological Quarterly 78 (1): 297–302.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael. 1997. Preliminary Notes on Judges' Work: The Judge as a Constituent of Courtroom “Hearings.” In Law in Action, ed. Travers, Max and Manzo, Jack, 99–136. London: Darthmouth.Google Scholar
Maguigan, Holly. 1995. Cultural Evidence and Male Violence: Are Feminist and Multiculturalist Reformers on a Collision Course in Criminal Courts? New York University Law Review 70:36–98.Google Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn. n.d. Social Diversity in Judicial Argumentation. Eindrapport NOI‐O4. Unpublished research report, University of Antwerp.Google Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn. Forthcoming. Theatricks in the Courtroom: The Intertextual Construction of Legal Cases. In Legal‐Lay Communication: Textual Travel in the Legal Process, ed. Conley, John, Heffer, Chris, and Rock, Frances. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Matoesian, Gregory M. 2001. Law and the Language of Identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Matoesian, Gregory M. 2005. Nailing Down an Answer: Participations of Power in Trial Talk. Discourse Studies 7 (6): 733–59.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth. 1994. Legal Language: Pragmatics, Poetics, and Social Power. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:435–55.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth. 1996. Recontextualization as Socialization: Text and Pragmatics in the Law School Classroom. In Natural Histories of Discourse, ed. Silverstein, Michael and Urban, Greg, 229–49. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, ed. Cohen, Joshua, Howard, Matthew, and Nussbaum, Martha C., 7–25. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Anne. 2007. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reniers, Georges. 1999. On the Selectivity and International Dynamics of Labour Migration Processes: An Analysis of Turkish and Moroccan Migration to Belgium. International Migration 37:679–713.Google Scholar
Renteln, Alison D. 1993. A Justification of the Cultural Defense as Partial Excuse. Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies 2:437–526.Google Scholar
Renteln, Alison D. 2004. The Cultural Defense. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1972. An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational Data for Doing Sociology. In Studies in Social Interaction, ed. Sudnow, David, 31–74. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sams, Julia P. 1986. The Availability of the “Cultural Defence” as an Excuse for Criminal Behaviour. Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 16 (2): 335–54.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1972. Notes on a Conversational Practice: Formulating Place. In Studies in Social Interaction, ed. Sudnow, David, 75–119. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1979. Identification and Recognition in Telephone Openings. In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. Psathas, George, 23–79. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In Meaning in Anthropology, ed. Basso, Keith H. and Selby, Henry A., 11–56. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. Clyne, Paul R., Hanks, William, and Hofbauer, Carol, 193–248. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1993. Metapragmatic Discourse and Metapragmatic Function. In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, ed. Lucy, John A., 193–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life. Language and Communication 23 (3–4): 193–230.Google Scholar
Song, Sarah. 2005. Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality. American Political Science Review 99 (4): 473–89.Google Scholar
Sudnow, David. 1965. Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of a Penal Code in a Public Defender's Office. Social Problems 12:255–76.Google Scholar
Voloshinov, Valentin N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Volpp, Leti. 1994. (Mis)Identifying Culture: Asian Women and the “Cultural Defense.” Harvard Women's Law Journal 17:57–105.Google Scholar
Volpp, Leti. 1996. Talking “Culture”: Gender, Race, Nation, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. Columbia Law Review 96 (6): 1573–617.Google Scholar
Volpp, Leti. 2000. Blaming Culture for Bad Behavior. Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 12 (1): 89–116.Google Scholar
Wortham, Stanton. 2003. Accomplishing Identity in Participant‐Denoting Discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 13:1–22.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Belgium Criminal Code, http://www.juridat.be/cgi_loi/loi_N.pl?cn=1867060801.Google Scholar