The language of expert and lay witness testimonies in The State of

Florida vs. Casey Marie Anthony: A corpus-based analysis.

Katerina Kokkaliari

A dissertation submitted to the Department of Theoretical and Applied

Linguistics, School of English Language and Literature, Faculty of

Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of the Master of Arts in Theoretical and

Applied Linguistics.

Supervisor: Professor Eliza Koutoupi-Kitis

September 2013
 Kokkaliari 2

Abstract

This paper examines eight testimonies, in whole or in part, of four lay and four expert

witnesses, both male and female, who testified in the Casey Anthony trial from May

to July 2011. The aim of this paper is to search the witnesses’ testimonies for the

presence of linguistic features, such as hedges, intensifiers and politeness markers that

have been considered to be characteristic of “women’s language” (Lakoff, 1975) or

“powerless speech” (O’Barr and Atkins, 1980) and to perform a quantitative and

qualitative analysis of the data in order to determine whether the use of those

linguistic features is governed by gender or power and to examine the different

functions performed by the linguistic features under examination. The findings of the

study corroborate O’Barr and Atkins’ (1980) suggestion that expert witnesses use

fewer “powerless” features than lay witnesses, and contradict Lakoff’s (1975)

proposal that these features are more frequent in women’s speech than in men’s

speech. However, contrary to what O’Barr and Atkins (1980) have found, our results

do not indicate that among witnesses of equal status, women use more powerless

features compared to men. Nonetheless, from a qualitative perspective, the very

powerlessness of the “powerless” features is challenged, in the light of the different

functions performed by these features.

The Case of Casey

On July 16 2008, three-year old Caylee Anthony, daughter of twenty-two-year old

Casey Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony, after

having disappeared for 31 days. Casey Anthony, who had been lying to her parents

and friends as to the whereabouts of her daughter for the duration of these 31 days,

finally claimed that the child had been kidnapped by a nanny. However, law
 Kokkaliari 3

enforcement investigators repeatedly discovered that she had been providing them

with false information with regard to the disappearance of her daughter. Six months

later, in December of 2008, the remains of a child were found in a wooded area near

the Anthony home, and were identified as belonging to Caylee. Casey Anthony was

indicted on the charges of murder in the first degree, aggravated child abuse,

aggravated manslaughter of a child, and on four counts for providing false

information to law enforcement and brought to trial before a jury. The trial began on

May 24 2011 and was concluded on July 5 2011, with Casey Anthony’s acquittal on

the counts of murder in the first degree, aggravated child abuse and aggravated

manslaughter of a child.

Casey Anthony’s trial attracted massive media attention and public interest. It was a

highly televised trial, and it was characterized as “the first social media trial”. In the

era of the Internet, the trial was shown on live streaming by numerous websites, while

videos of the trial are still available online today, two years after the conclusion of the

trial. During the trial, comments would constantly pop up in forums and social media

discussing the developments in the trial. After the conclusion of the trial, both the

leading counsel for the Defense and the leading counsel for the State authored books,

where they narrated their experience in the trial. The judge presiding over the trial has

become so famous that he has reportedly received a proposal to appear on TV as a

host in a reality court show.

Language and Woman’s Place

Robin Lakoff’s seminal book Language and Woman’s Place, which practically

inaugurated gender and language studies, was published in 1975. It contained the

homonymous article, which was originally published in 1973, as its first part, and an
 Kokkaliari 4

additional second part under the title Why Women are Ladies. For ease of reference,

all references to Language and Woman’s Place will be made on the 1975 book

version. One of Lakoff’s major contributions in Language and Woman’s Place was

her description of Women’s Language. By that, she meant not only the language used

by women, but also the language used to describe or refer to women (1975). As

Lakoff herself admits (1975), the data on which her analysis is based were mainly

gathered by introspection, which falls under the negatively criticized “armchair

linguistics” approach. She studied her own speech, and she observed the language of

her acquaintances, as well as the language of mass media, especially situation

comedies and commercials, to extract data and draw conclusions with regard to

women’s talk and talk about women. This paper will only focus on Women’s

Language as the language used by women, which is described by Robin Lakoff as

consisting of the following forms:

1. Words which are related to women’s specific interests, such shirr or dart (used in

sewing discourse), or different hues of colors like magenta, beige, ecru, aquamarine,

which are precisely discerned by women, and form part of the women’s active

vocabulary, but are non-existent in the vocabulary of most men, who consider them to

be rather trivial (Lakoff, 1975). Lakoff’s interpretation of this finding is that since

men are preoccupied with important matters, they relegate to women non-crucial or

even trivial decisions, such as discriminating between ecru and beige (1975).

However, as Ginet (2004) points out, Lakoff here does not take into account the

terminology used in equally trivial and non-crucial topics that fall under men’s

interests, such as sports jargon which is almost exclusively used by men. For a

woman, the precise meaning of off-side may be as useless information as is for a man

the exact nuance to which the color term aquamarine corresponds.

 Kokkaliari 5

2. What Lakoff calls “empty adjectives”, i.e. adjectives which, besides their literal

meaning, are also used to show the speaker’s approval or admiration of something.

Some of these adjectives such as divine, charming, cute, adorable, sweet, lovely

(1975: 11-12) are “strongly marked as feminine” and are therefore, primarily used by

women. Men would restrict themselves to the use of their neutral counterparts such as

great, terrific, cool, neat, while women can choose from both sets, with their choice

being governed by the seriousness of the topic at hand, i.e. the feminine set is used in

lighter topics and the neutral set is reserved for more serious occasions (Lakoff, 1975:

12). Adjectives of this type are known as affective adjectives, because they are used in

expressing feelings, as opposed to referential adjectives, which are used to refer to

specific properties of objects, states or people (Talbot 2001: 38-39). Nevertheless, as

McConnell-Ginet points out (2004: 138) the adjectives Lakoff refers to as neutral may

also be equally empty. In her enumeration of the features comprising women’s

language, Lakoff refers laconically to empty adjectives, giving a few examples from

the feminine set alone, which may give the impression that with “empty adjectives”

she only means feminine adjectives (1975: 53). However, the adjectives comprising

the neutral set are also equally empty when used affectively, rather than referentially,

and are also extensively used for trivial topics, as in “What a terrific car”, or “The

view is terrific” (both examples taken from the British National Corpus, slightly

altered).

3. Question intonation in the place of declaratives, such as tag questions. As Lakoff

puts it, a tag is “midway between an outright statement and a yes-no question”, in that

it exhibits less assertiveness compared to an outright statement, and more

assertiveness compared to a yes-no question (1975: 15). According to Lakoff (1975),

tag questions explicitly allow room for the addressee to diverge from the proposition
 Kokkaliari 6

expressed in the speaker’s utterance. Lakoff traces three types of tag questions (1975:

16). The first one involves cases when the speaker expresses his/her perception of an

event, about which he/she is not entirely sure, and expects confirmation or refutation

on the part of the addressee, as in “Johnson scored the goal, didn’t he?”. The second

tag-question type involves tag questions incorporated in “small talk” on the part of the

speaker, who, by means of the tag, tries to initiate a conversation with the addressee,

as in “It’s quite cold today, isn’t it?”. The third type of tag questions pertains to

seeking confirmation for expressed personal feelings and opinions. As Lakoff notes

(1975: 16), seeking corroboration for one’s own feelings, as in “my feet are killing

me, don’t they?” is incongruous, since the speaker is the only person who can provide

the correct answer. However, tag questions often appear after personal opinions, as in

“John is hot, isn’t he?”, in which case, among many other different possibilities, the

speaker’s resorting to the tag question structure may be attributed to his/her reluctance

to express his/her opinion explicitly. Lakoff articulates her intuition that this last type

of tag questions is more frequently employed by women than men, although she

acknowledges that her impression is not accompanied by statistical evidence

corroborating it. The problem with this type of tag questions, according to Lakoff, is

that the speaker may appear ignorant, tentative, insecure or lacking self-confidence.

However, according to Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003: 159-160), a tag is not only

employed for the purpose of indicating lack of unswerving conviction, but it may also

facilitate the establishment of firmer connections between the speaker and the

addressee, thus resulting in the empowerment of the speaker’s position “by enlisting

social support for the speaker and their ideas and projects”.

4. “Rising intonation in statement contexts”, the now so-called uptalk. The use of

rising intonation, which is typical of questions, in declarative answers is described by

 Kokkaliari 7

Lakoff as “especially hesitant” (1975: 17). This pattern creates an oxymoron, in that

the speaker appears to be seeking confirmation for information s/he only may be

eligible to provide. Lakoff provides the following example of question intonation in a

declarative answer:

A: When will dinner be ready?

B: Oh … around … six o’clock? (1975: 17)

According to Lakoff’s interpretation of the above example, it is as though speaker B

is seeking for speaker A’s agreement on the dinner time and thus, speaker A is

required to provide confirmation, or as if speaker B is unsure on the exact time of

dinner. For Lakoff this signifies “unwillingness to assert an opinion carried to an

extreme” (1975: 17). It should be noted here, that although Lakoff refers to rising

intonation in declaratives as exclusively used by women (1975), today as Eckert &

McConnell-Ginet (2003) state, it is also used extensively by young male speakers of

American English. However, according to Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003),

uptalk is still associated with femininity, insecurity, powerlessness and lack of self-

confidence.

5. Hedges, which, in Lakoff’s (1975: 53) words are “words that convey the sense that

the speaker is uncertain about what he (or she) is saying, or cannot vouch for the

accuracy of the statement”. Among the examples of hedges that Lakoff herself

indicatively uses are “well”, “you know”, “kind of”, “sort of”, “I guess”, “I think”,

and “I wonder”. Being aware of the multi-functionality of hedges, although maybe not

in its whole extent, Lakoff explicitly excludes from her analysis the cases when

hedges like “sort of” and “kind of”, immediately preceding scalar adjectives, are used

literally to denote a lesser degree of the attribute conveyed by the adjective. An

 Kokkaliari 8

example of this would be “The water is kind of cold”, where “kind of cold” would be

taken to mean something in between cold and cool, but closer to cold. Under this

“legitimate” use of hedges, Lakoff probably also meant to include instances of pure

lack of certainty, or lack of commitment to ones’ utterance. For example, if in the

example above the speaker was referring to the past, as in “The water was kind of

cold”, this utterance, depending on the particular situation, could be interpreted as

denoting uncertainty as to whether the water was actually cold. Lakoff also considers

the use of hedges to be “legitimate”, when they are used for the sake of politeness,

mitigating an otherwise offensive assertion, as in “John is sort of short”, when the

speaker actually believes that John is short (or even very short), but chooses to

mitigate the force of the utterance, by using the hedge, making the utterance sound

less assertive, and therefore, more polite (Lakoff’s example, p. 54). Thus, Lakoff’s

intention is to include in women’s language the cases when hedges are present, even

though none of the conditions above apply, i.e. when hedges appear simply for the

sake of non-assertiveness. In Lakoff’s (1975: 54) opinion, women hedge more

“because they are socialized to believe that asserting themselves strongly isn’t nice or

ladylike, or even feminine”.

To be able to discern whether hedges are generated “legitimately” due to pure lack of

certainty or for reasons of politeness, as opposed to “illegitimately” due to the fact

that women are expected and taught to talk in a less assertive manner, one would need

to look into the context, i.e. what has preceded and what follows. In other words, we

should examine what prompted the speaker to produce a hedged utterance, and how

this utterance is received by the hearer. Moreover, apart from the two legitimate

instances of hedges that Lakoff has pointed out, there is a number of other functions

of hedges, which, again, would fall under the legitimate category, since they are not
 Kokkaliari 9

guided by the speaker’s powerlessness, or desire to appear tentative. Apart from the

functions of hedges already mentioned by Lakoff in Language and Woman’s Place,

Coates in her book Women Talk (1996), where she examines conversations among

women friends, describes some additional functions of hedges. According to Coates

(1996), hedges can be used for reasons of sensitivity to other’s feelings, to protect

both the addressee and the speaker from controversial claims. She associates this

function of hedges with the notion of positive face (Brown & Levinson, 1987), since

hedges facilitate “the expression of controversial views”, without putting at stake the

speaker’s face, i.e. hedges allow the speaker to express a controversial opinion from

which the speaker can retreat, if need be (Coates, 1996: 156). As Coates notes, (1996:

158), hedges, especially “sort of” and “kind of” are also used simply as fillers, to help

speakers buy some time, as they are searching for the right word. This particular

function of hedges is often signaled by a pause directly following the hedge, as is

illustrated in Coates’ example “it feels like your nose is just sort of . expanding” (with

the dot standing for the pause). In this case, the hedge is not used to signal

tentativeness, or lack of certainty; it is rather used by speakers as a device which

indicates that they are still active in their turn, despite the pause that may follow,

while it also signals that the word which is finally used may not be the best choice

(Coates, 1996). Coates (1996: 160) also observes that hedges can be used as devices

which assist speakers in “avoiding playing the expert”. Unlike men, women refrain

from assuming the role of the expert in conversations among friends, and resort to

hedges in order to “minimize social distance between participants” (Coates, 1996:

161). Therefore, in spite of the fact that they may be real-world experts in the topic

discussed, they will employ hedges to make their speech sound less fluent and

authoritative, in order to preserve equal status with their interlocutors and thus, allow
 Kokkaliari 10

them to contribute to the conversation in equal terms. Coates (1996) stresses that due

to the versatility of hedges, the same hedge may perform multiple functions at the

same time in a given utterance. For example, a hedge may simultaneously function as

a filler signaling the speaker’s struggle to find the right word, and as a device which

allows the speaker to make a controversial remark without threatening her own

positive face, or the addressee’s positive face, as in “Amy is kind of . arrogant”.

According to Coates (1996), the use of hedges enables the smooth continuation of a

discussion, as it helps the participants reach a mutually agreed position and avoid

conflict, via expressing moderated, flexible positions. In the light of the multi-

functionality of hedges, Coates (1996) challenges Lakoff’s views that women are

normally unassertive and that hedges are linked with lack of assertiveness, and

characterizes them as speculative assumptions. Coates sees women’s ability to exploit

the multi-functionality of hedges more as a strength, rather than a weakness, which is

derived from women’s sensitivity to “the complex needs of speakers as social beings”

(1996: 172). Coates (1996) suggests that hedges as part of women’s language initially

arose from women’s experience as a less powerful group, as women had to develop

interpersonal sensitivity to anticipate the face needs of the more powerful group, i.e.

men, but are now used to serve multiple purposes within the frame of collaborative,

friendly conversation.

6. The intensive “so”, which, according to Lakoff, is used to mitigate the speaker’s

strong feelings. Thus, the use of “so” instead of “very”, as in “I feel so happy”, as

opposed to “I feel very happy”, obscures the level of intensity of the speaker’s

emotion. In other words, although with “so” the intensity is evidently there, the level

of the intensity is not as straightforward as with “very”. However, as Talbot notes

(2001: 39), the intensive “so” is now considered to be a “boosting device”, i.e. an
 Kokkaliari 11

intensifier, or booster, like “very”. I would venture to say that contemporary

conversational data would prove Talbot right and Lakoff wrong. If “so” was

perceived as obscure in terms of degree of intensity, it would be somehow commented

upon by the addressees of the utterances containing the “obscure so”. For instance, we

would encounter questions for clarification such as “How much?” as responses to

utterances containing the dubious “so”, as in “I love you so much”. “So” is now used

interchangeably with “very”, with no perceivable difference in the level of intensity.

Even if there is obscurity in “so”, it seems to go unnoticed by both speakers and

hearers.

7. Hypercorrect grammar. By that, probably Lakoff does not mean the use of a

grammar which is more correct than necessary or normal, as the use of the prefix

‘hyper’ might indicate, but the use of a more correct grammar in comparison with the

grammar used by men. According to Lakoff, that’s because women “are not supposed

to talk rough” (p. 55). An example cited by Lakoff is the fact that boys “drop their

g’s” more than girls do, i.e. they use the alveolar [] instead of the standard velar []

in the –ing ending.

8. Superpolite forms. Women are not supposed to use swear words, vulgar

expressions, or slang. They are supposedly “the arbiters of morality” as Lakoff (1975:

52) puts it, and as such they are expected to be polite, indirect, to use euphemism in

cases of taboo topics, and to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ more frequently compared

to men. According to Lakoff, a compound request such as “Won’t you close the

door?” is more polite than “Will you close the door?” or even “Will you please close

the door?”, because its negative structure allows more room for the addressee to

refuse, and as Lakoff notes, the more compound the request, the more typical it is of

women’s speech (1975: 50-51). In Lakoff’s words, “politeness involves an absence of

 Kokkaliari 12

a strong statement, and women’s speech is devised to prevent the expression of strong

statements”; this is Lakoff’s interpretation of the “general fact” that women’s

language is more polite than men’s (1975: 51).

The use of weaker expletives such as oh dear, oh my goodness or oh my gosh, instead

of stronger ones like shit, or damn, may also fall under the category of superpolite

forms, because stronger expletives are considered swear words, and therefore,

impolite. However, Lakoff attributes women’s tendency to use milder expletives,

rather than stronger ones to women’s being socially discouraged from conveying

strong temper (1975: 10-11). According to Lakoff, strong expletives demonstrate

stronger emotions, unlike weaker expletives, which express milder emotions (1975:

10). As Lakoff notes, in a serious situation, the use of weaker expletives would be

highly inappropriate, as in “Dear me, did he kidnap the baby?”, which can be seen as

an indication that women’s language is reserved for less serious matters (1975: 10).

9. Lack of sense of humor. According to Lakoff, women are stereotypically thought to

lack the ability to tell or grasp jokes, and therefore, humorous language is more

frequently found in men’s language than in women’s language. Here, according to

Talbot (2001: 40), Lakoff is not describing her findings or intuitions with regard to

usage on the part of women, but she is “clearly articulating a negative stereotype”

generated by men.

10. Women speak in “italics” (Lakoff, 1975: 56), or “emphatic stress”, which is

Talbot’s (2001: 40) alternative term for Lakoff’s “italics”. To that, we should also add

emphatic words or expressions, the so-called boosters or intensifiers, which are the

opposite of hedges in that they are used to strengthen the force of the proposition

contained in the utterance. Lakoff suggests that despite their seeming strengthening
 Kokkaliari 13

effect, intensifiers may have exactly the opposite effect, since they display the

speaker’s anxiety to be taken seriously, to be listened to, or to be believed. In that

way, they display uncertainty as to the convincing power of the utterance on its own,

without the “double force” of the intensifier (Lakoff, 1975: 56). To illustrate this,

Lakoff provides the example of students, who in their English compositions, “tend to

use italics far more than do established and confident writers of prose” (1975: 56).

The above criteria of feminine language were not meant to be absolute, or women-

exclusive. In Lakoff’s own words (1975: 59) “most women would use most of them

in a wider range of psychological and social environments than most men would”,

because women are more frequently involved in situations where they would prefer to

refrain from being assertive, compared to men. Therefore, Lakoff notes that for one to

classify a particular linguistic form as part of “women’s language”, “men’s language”,

or “neutral language”, they would need to take into consideration “the real-world

context in which it was uttered” (1975: 59). When individual instances of the above

linguistic features are taken out of context, there is a high chance that they will be

mistakenly perceived as fulfilling the same function, namely that of mitigating the

force of the utterance for the sole purpose of exhibiting non-assertiveness, and, hence,

compliance with the stereotypical image of femininity. The items enlisted under

“women’s language” may also be used by men, in which case, as Lakoff notes, the

use of women’s language by men is to be attributed to real-world power (or rather

lack of it), rather than gender (1975). Similarly, women who happen to have power in

the real-world seem to refrain from using women’s language, at least within the frame

of their professional environment, from which their real-world power is derived. This

observation sparked O’Barr and Atkins (1980) hypothesis, discussed hereunder, that it

is power and not gender that governs the use of the traits Lakoff described as
 Kokkaliari 14

belonging to “women’s language”. However, Lakoff does not disregard power, when

describing “women’s language”, but she rather takes it for granted. She considers

women to be “the “uninvolved”, “out of power” group par excellence” (1975: 14).

Nevertheless, this does not entail that women are biologically preprogrammed to be

less powerful, more uninvolved or less assertive than men. Unlike women’s

inferiority in muscular strength compared to men, women’s linguistic and social

powerlessness is not inherent in the biological sex, but it seems to be inherent in the

social gender. Women are not born non-assertive, but they acquire ‘ladylike’ non-

assertiveness, as they grow older and become part of the manmade society. Thus,

“women’s language” is not biologically driven, but it is a product of society, in the

same way that gender and the stereotypes and social expectations that accompany it

are, again, social rather than natural constructions. In other words, women’s language

is not dependent on (the biological) sex, but on the (social) gender, which, given a

specific society and culture, is accompanied by the respective degree of social power.

If we assume that powerlessness is inherent in the female gender, then women are

expected by society to act and talk as powerless, or else they may be stigmatized as

less feminine. In language, powerlessness can be mainly displayed via talking in a

tentative as opposed to an assertive manner. Thus, according to Lakoff, women find

themselves in a predicament, where they are required to behave and talk in a less

assertive manner so as to appear more feminine, but by being less assertive they face

the risk of not being taken seriously. They are, thus, faced with a puzzling paradox, a

“double-bind”, when it comes to deciding whether to adopt the feminine language or

not, since either way they will not be respected (1975: 61).

“Women’s Language” or “Powerless Language”?

 Kokkaliari 15

Lakoff’s work on language variation on the basis of gender, in combination with their

discovery that trial manuals, written by successful legal professionals, contained

information on how female witnesses behave differently from male witnesses and

advice on how they should be treated, prompted William O’Barr, John Conley and

their colleagues to engage in the study of gender-related language variation in the

American trial courtroom. In the summer of 1974, they recorded more than 150 hours

of speech in 10 weeks of trials in a North Carolina superior criminal court. The

multidisciplinary team, which O’Barr named the Duke Law and Language Project

(O’Barr, 1993: 325), because most of the participants came from the Duke University

in North Carolina, conducted a 30-month research on language variation and its

impact on its recipients, based on the transcripts of the trials they had recorded.

Within the frame of this research, O’Barr and Atkins (1980) scrutinized their

transcripts with the aim of detecting speech differences between men and women, on

the baseline of the linguistic forms that were associated with “women’s language”,

according to Lakoff. Due to the serious nature of the topics covered under witness

examinations in court, humorous language was excluded from the analysis. Tag

questions were also excluded, since witnesses are not supposed to ask any questions,

with the exception of questions for clarifications. They, thus, searched the witnesses’

testimonies for any occurrences of intensifiers, hedges, hesitation forms, rising

intonation in declarative contexts, as well as questions directed to the lawyers,

gestures, polite forms, the word sir, which was “assumed to be an indication of more

polite speech”, and direct quotes instead of reported speech. Upon examining the

language used by witnesses, they quickly discovered that some women exhibited the

linguistic characteristics described by Lakoff, although there was “considerable

variation in the degree to which women exhibited these characteristics”. Moreover,

 Kokkaliari 16

they also found that the speech of male witnesses was far from bereft of the features

comprising “women’s language”. They were, thus, led to the conclusion that Lakoff’s

“women’s language” is “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to

women”. However, it should be noted that in Language and Woman’s Place, Lakoff

never claims that the traits she attributes to “women’s language” are women-

exclusive, or used by all women; she rather refers to linguistic forms which are

stereotypically associated with the feminine gender. They noticed that all of the

female witnesses of their study whose speech did not correspond to Lakoff’s

description of “women’s language” shared an “unusually high social status”. They

were “well-educated, professional women, of middle-class background”. On the other

hand, they observed that female witnesses of lower social status, e.g. housewives,

used “women’s language” features to a much larger extent. As for the male witnesses

who exhibited abundant features of “women’s language” in their testimonies, they

were primarily of lower social status, they held less prestigious jobs, or were

unemployed. In contrast, middle-class men used relatively few features of “women’s

language”. O’Barr and Atkins also found that prior courtroom experience correlated

with low incidence of women’s language features, since expert witnesses who had

provided expert testimony in court in the past, exhibited fewer instances of “women’s

language”. Thus, O’Barr and Atkins noticed that individuals who had real-world

power stemming from their high social status, as well as individuals who had

situational power due to the status accorded to them by the court, as is the case with

expert witnesses, did not exhibit ample features of “women’s language”, irrespective

of their gender. They, therefore, suggested that power, and not gender is the decisive

factor for the appearance of the features Lakoff classified as comprising “women’s

language”, and they proposed that the term “powerless language” should substitute
 Kokkaliari 17

Lakoff’s term “women’s language”. Although they acknowledged that in their study,

more women tended to use many “powerless” features, whereas more men tended to

employ few such features, they attributed this tendency to women’s lack of social

power. In this respect, they seem to agree with Lakoff, who suggested that women are

a powerless group “par excellence” (1975: 14).

Out of all the witnesses whose testimonies they recorded, O’Barr and Atkins selected

3 female and 3 male witnesses for a more detailed analysis of their speech. They were

selected on the basis of their representativeness of the whole sample of witnesses, and

on the basis of their difference from each other in terms of powerful statuses, i.e. both

the male and the female set varied from witnesses with relatively powerless to

witnesses with powerful social status. All the examples of powerless and powerful

speech, as well as the statistical data that O’Barr and Atkins provide in this study,

come from these six witnesses. O’Barr and Atkins provided the following speech

excerpt as an “extreme” example of “women’s language” or powerless speech

produced by a middle-aged housewife.

L. State whether or not, Mrs. W, you were acquainted with or knew the late

Mrs. E. D.

W. Quite well.

L. What was the nature of your acquaintance with her?

W. Well, we were, uh, very close friends. Uh, she was even sort of like a

mother to me. (1980: 381)

 Kokkaliari 18

In this example, the witness’s turns contain a number of “women’s language” features

such as intensifiers (quite, very, even), hedges (sort of), and hesitations (well 1, uh).

Therefore, from a quantitative point of view, this witness clearly employs features

classified under “women’s language”. However, the use of those features on the part

of the witness does not necessarily need to go hand in hand with non-assertiveness,

tentativeness or powerlessness. For instance, the hesitation marks and the hedges in

“Well, we were, uh, very close friends. Uh, she was even sort of like a mother to me”

could be interpreted as fillers, which facilitate the speaker’s search for the right word.

After all, a speaker’s lack of eloquence does not necessarily imply that the speaker is

non-assertive or powerless. The world abounds with examples of socially powerful

people, even prime-ministers or kings, e.g. George IV of England, whose speech is far

from fluent.

Using the findings of the Duke Law and Language Project with regard to powerless

speech, Conley, O’Barr and Lind (1978) conducted an experiment for the purpose of

estimating the impact of powerless and powerful speech on how the testimonies were

perceived and received by the jurors. They took an excerpt from a testimony which

contained a number of powerless features, and had it recorded by actors playing the

witness and the lawyer. They made 4 different recordings: a recording of exactly the

same segment of testimony, containing all the powerless features, in which the

witness was played by a female actor; a second recording of almost the same

testimony with fewer instances of powerless features, where the witness was played

by a man; a third recording of the testimony without the powerless features, with a

female actor playing the witness, and finally; a fourth recording of the testimony

bereft of its original powerless features, this time with a male actor in the role of the
1
O’Barr and Atkins (1980) classify ‘well’ as a hesitation mark, but Lakoff (1975: 53) classifies it as a
hedge.
 Kokkaliari 19

witness. Conley et al. (1978) intentionally chose not to include in the tape with the

male version of powerless speech all the instances of powerless speech that originally

appeared in the actual testimony. The reasoning behind their decision was that “a

faithful replication of the original female witness’ speech style and powerless

mannerisms –although suitable for a female witness- were not within the normal

range of acceptable male verbal usage” (Conley et al.: 1384). Surprisingly, this

reasoning contradicts the thesis of both the 1978 article by Conley et al. and the1980

article by O’Barr and Atkins that power and not gender is the determinant factor for

the appearance of powerless features. It thus, seems to rearticulate stereotypes about

women’s “mannerisms” and to approximate Lakoff’s interpretation with regard to the

association of powerless features with the feminine gender.

Ninety-six undergraduates of the University of North Carolina listened to the

recordings, and were then asked to complete a questionnaire which contained

questions regarding their evaluation of the witness in terms of convincingness,

truthfulness, competence, intelligence and trustworthiness. The results of the

experiment corroborated Conley et al.’s hypothesis that both the female and the male

witness made a better impression to the mock jurors in the powerful version of the

testimony. This led to their conclusion that “the use of the powerless style produces

consistently less favorable reactions to a witness than does the use of the powerful

testimony style” (Conley et al., 1978: 1386). However, since the actual text of the

testimony Conley et al. used in their experiment is not included in the article, we

cannot be sure as to whether this particular sample included different functions of

“powerless” features, other than display of uncertainty and non-assertiveness. It

would be interesting to see for example, how the use of “powerless” features for
 Kokkaliari 20

reasons of politeness or how the exploitation of “powerless” features for the purpose

of interactional power would be perceived by the audience.

Conley et al., similar to O’Barr and Atkins completely disregard the versatility of

language and the multiple functions that the features they term “powerless” can

perform. Like Lakoff, they interpret those features as indications of non-assertiveness,

or, as they put it “lack of forcefulness in speaking”. Based on this assumption, they

proceed to a binary classification of speech into “powerless”, which exhibits multiple

instances of these features, and “powerful”, whose powerfulness resides in the

absence of those features. Nevertheless, their findings with regard to the impact of

language variation on the jurors’ evaluation of the witnesses’ testimonies in terms of

credibility, raise serious concerns regarding discriminations on the basis of style of

speech, during the decision making process. According to Conley et al. (1978: 1392-

1393), if the use of powerful or powerless features in a witness’s testimony is

dependent on the witness’s situational or real-world status, then the results of the

experiment would mean that witnesses of a relatively low status are deemed less

credible than high-status witnesses, merely on the basis of how they speak, rather than

what they say. For O’Barr (1993: 325), this research provides “empirical evidence for

the fragility of the concept of justice in American law”. As Rock (2011: 209) notes,

the fact that such discriminations exist in mere style variation within the same variety,

arises serious concerns with regard to the extent to which witnesses speaking less

prestigious varieties, dialects, or even worse, different languages, will be judged as

less credible.

Even though Lakoff (1975) acknowledged, even to a limited extent, the multi-

functionality of the features she enlisted under “women’s language”, especially

hedges, O’Barr and Atkins, and Conley et al. treat all instances of “women’s
 Kokkaliari 21

language” as indications of powerlessness. This is evident in their very proposal that

“women’s language” should be termed “powerless language”. As Coates (2004)

indicates, they assume that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the

linguistic forms under examination and a specific function. As Taylor puts it (2006:

273), “it is clearly insufficient to count occurrences without investigating their usage

and function within the interaction”. Another problem Coates (2004) traces in O’Barr

and Atkins analysis is that they use Lakoff’s set of “women’s language” features

uncritically, despite the fact that those forms are not based on empirical data, but on

Lakoff’s introspection, intuition and personal observation. Moreover, Coates (2004)

suggests that the reduced value assigned to a particular linguistic feature is not

inherent in the feature itself, but it may stem from the feature’s association with a low

status group. Thus, in Coates’s words (2004: 374), “because female speakers have

low status, linguistic forms said to be typical of women will acquire low status by

association”.

The very powerlessness of the “powerless” features has also been challenged.

According to Coates (2004: 374), O’Barr and Atkins seem to take the powerlessness

of the features they enlist under “powerless speech” for granted, e.g. they consider

hedges to be “intrinsically weak or tentative”. However, Holmes (1986: 2-3)

distinguishes two different categories of I think, which was indiscriminately

considered a hedge by Lakoff (1975), O’Barr and Atkins (1980) and Conley et al.

(1978): the deliberative I think, “expressing confidence and adding weight to the

proposition” and the tentative I think, “expressing uncertainty or softening the force of

the proposition”. The latter category functions as a hedge, whereas the former

category is closer to an intensifier.

 Kokkaliari 22

Taylor (2006: 270) in her analysis of witness testimonies in the Hutton Inquiry makes

a distinction between institutional power, which is existent in the participants as a

result of their role in the particular discourse, e.g. the power held by counsels in a

court of law, and interactional power, which is not inherent in the participant’s role in

the discourse, but can be enacted through language, even by the less powerful

participants. In that respect, the lack of power to which O’Barr and Atkins and Conley

et al. attribute the use of powerless features by witnesses of relatively low social

status who lack courtroom experience, corresponds to lack of institutional, rather than

interactional power. As Taylor suggests (2006: 263), the very features that O’Barr and

Atkins would characterize as powerless, “may also be a means of negotiating and

exerting interactional power”. She associates the use of such features with the notion

of positive and negative politeness and face, as described by Brown & Levinson

(1987). Negative face corresponds to an individual’s need to act freely without being

impeded by others, while positive face reflects an individual’s need to be accepted

and liked by at least some others (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Likewise, according to

Brown and Levinson, negative politeness is oriented towards the satisfaction of the

addressee’s negative face, and is, thus “avoidance-based”, while positive politeness is

oriented towards the satisfaction of the addressee’s positive face, thus being

“approach-based” (1987: 70). As Taylor (2006) suggests, in courtroom discourse, the

witness’s negative face is often threatened, especially under cross-examination, which

tends to be more hostile than direct examination, as the counsel may impede the

witness from freely narrating his/her version of the events for which he/she is giving

testimony. At the same time, according to Taylor (2006), the witness’s positive face

before the eyes of the judge, the jury and the audience may be at stake, when the

witness is attacked by the counsel. As is illustrated by Brown and Levinson (1987),

 Kokkaliari 23

within the frame of negative politeness, markers of deference, hedges, and other

attenuating mechanisms can be employed to accompany a face threatening act, and,

thus, save the hearer’s negative face. Likewise, an act threatening the hearer’s positive

face can be mitigated when accompanied by a positive politeness marker, which

reassures the hearer that he/she is accepted and liked by the speaker. Thus, by

adorning a face threatening act with specks of positive or negative politeness markers,

one can attenuate the aggressiveness of the face threatening act. Taylor (2006)

suggests that witnesses who are rather deficient in institutional power, i.e. witnesses

who do not have a high social status or any power accorded to them by the court, may

achieve interactional power by combining face threatening acts with negative

politeness markers that are classified under Conley at al.’s “powerless speech”. In this

case, as is indicated by Taylor (2006: 283), the mitigation performed by means of the

powerless features “may be seen as directed towards the beneficiaries of the

discourse”, i.e. the judge, the members of the jury, the audience present in the

courtroom, and even the audience attending the trial on TV or on the Internet. Thus,

the witness can exploit the mechanisms of politeness to perform a softer face

threatening act, while at the same time protecting his/her own positive face before the

eyes of the observers. For example, a witness saying “You, sir, are trying to distort the

truth” uses ‘sir’ as a device of negative politeness, to show deference and maintain

social distance, mitigating the aggressiveness of the face threatening act and

protecting his/her own positive face, without necessarily mitigating the force of the

proposition conveyed through the utterance. In other words, this is a device by means

of which one can get the intended message through, with minimal casualties.

The particularities of courtroom discourse

 Kokkaliari 24

Contrary to what is the norm in ordinary, every-day conversations, in courtroom

discourse, there is preallocation of turns. For instance, the turn order for opening

statements and closing arguments is specified by Procedural Law: the State always

delivers both its opening statement and its closing arguments before the Defense.

Moreover, witnesses giving testimony are only supposed to answer the questions

addressed to them by either the counsels or the judge, rather than initiate a topic of

discussion or ask questions themselves, except for the case of requests for

clarification. Similarly, although the members of the jury are the ultimate decision-

makers, they are not supposed to ask any questions.

By taking the oath “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help me God”, witnesses explicitly and officially express their willingness to

comply with Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and the maxims of quantity, quality,

relevance and manner. Likewise, non-compliance with these maxims constitutes

ground for objections on the part of the counsels. In particular, the testifying witness’s

non-compliance with the maxim of quality gives the examining counsel ground to

impeach the witness, i.e. to challenge the truthfulness of the witness’s statement, by

confronting the witness with a contradictory prior statement. The fact that witnesses

explicitly commit themselves to obey the cooperative principle, and the maxim of

quality in particular, lest they be held accountable for perjury, may be partly to blame

for the appearance of powerless features in the witnesses’ testimonies, as the

witnesses strive to find the words which more closely correspond to the truth.

Moreover, as Coulthard & Johnson (2007) note, the maxim of quality explicitly holds

for witnesses, but is suspended for examining counsels, who are entitled to lie for the

benefit of their clients.

 Kokkaliari 25

Within courtroom discourse, during direct and cross-examination, most of the talk

exchange takes place between the counsel who conducts the examination and the

witness who is giving testimony. This witness-counsel talk exchange is often

legitimately interrupted by the opposing counsel who may object to the content or the

wording of the answers or the questions. Apart from the active participants in this

“seemingly dyadic talk” (Eades, 2010: 30), there are also the silent participants, the

members of the jury, who are the ultimate decision-makers. Thus, although the

interaction seemingly takes place between two parties, i.e. the counsel and the

witness, the indirect and most important recipient of the talk is the jury. As Taylor

(2006) notes, it is very rare for a lawyer to ask a question to which he/she does not

know the answer. The questions do not reflect the counsel’s lack of knowledge, but

they are asked so that the members of the jury will gain knowledge of what the

counsel and the witness already know. Thus, if it wasn’t for the numerous observers

in and out of the courtroom, the talk exchange between the counsel and the witness

would be much different.

As Holt & Johnson (2010) note, at certain points during the trial, in the beginning and

towards the end of the proceedings, counsels deliver their opening statements and

closing arguments in quite long turns, to which no one else is supposed to contribute.

In contrast, witnesses do not deliver their contributions to the trial in the form of

narratives, but they are examined “through a series of question and answer

exchanges” (Holt & Johnson, 2010: 23). As Gibbons (2008) suggests, in ordinary

every-day conversations, there are symmetrical social relationships which allow

participants to ask information seeking questions, without demanding answers, and

informational relationships, in which the questioner does not have the information that

is in the respondent’s possession. However, in courtroom discourse, as Gibbons

 Kokkaliari 26

(2008: 116) indicates, the counsel conducting the witness’s examination has the right

to demand an answer, since the social relationship between the counsel and the

witness “is one of power asymmetry in which the lawyers have control of the

questioning process and witnesses are obliged to reply”. Moreover, the informational

relationship between the questioner (counsel) and the respondent (witness) deviates

from the ordinary questioner-respondent informational relationship in that the counsel

in both direct and cross examination typically already possesses the information

requested from the witness.

Criminal Trials in the USA

One of the fundamental principles of the criminal justice system of the U.S.A. is trial

by jury (Cotterill, 2003). Under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “the

accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the

same state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed”. In the

adversarial legal system, which is employed in the U.S.A., the two sides present their

“conflicting and competing versions of the events” under examination before the jury,

who is charged with the duty to decide which version of the events is more plausible

than the other (Cotterill, 2003: 9). Since the defendant is assumed to be innocent until

proven guilty, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution which is charged with the

task of proving to the jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Thus, the prosecution delivers its opening statement first, to inform the jury about the

case and provide them with insight with regard to the version of events they will be

presenting throughout the trial. For the same reason, the prosecution calls its own

witnesses first. The defense may not call any witnesses whatsoever, as they may opt
 Kokkaliari 27

to try to rebut the prosecution’s case, by conducting the cross-examination of the

prosecution’s witnesses.

Witnesses called from the prosecution are first examined in direct examination by the

counsel for the prosecution, and after direct examination has been concluded, they are

examined in cross-examination by the defense counsel. Likewise, witnesses called by

the defense are first examined by the defense counsel in direct examination, and are

then cross-examined by the prosecuting counsel. Cross examination may be followed

by redirect examination, which may be followed by recross examination. Since in

direct examination the witness is examined by the counsel who has called the witness

on the stand, it is considered to be friendly examination, as opposed to cross

examination, which is rather hostile. According to Biscetti (2006), in this case

‘hostile’ is synonymous to ‘adversarial’, and a hostile witness is a witness who has

been called to testify for the opposing side, or a witness whose testimony is adverse or

unfavorable to the cross examining counsel. As Eades (2010) notes, a major aim of

cross-examination is to expose inconsistencies in the witness’s story, or to present the

witness as unreliable and, thus, challenge the credibility of the witness’s testimony.

By contrast, the main purpose of direct examination is for the examining counsels to

present and construct their version of the story, facilitated by the witnesses’ answers.

Expert Witnesses in the American Legal System

According to Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence:

If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of

fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness

qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education,

 Kokkaliari 28

may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony

is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of

reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles

and methods reliably to the facts of the case.

Thus, as Coulthard and Johnson (2007: 208) put it, “the American legal system

approves the technique(s) that a witness uses rather than the witness him/herself”.

Expert witnesses, when asked questions directly pertaining to their area of expertise

are not expected to be tentative or unassertive, or else they may appear incongruously

non-experts. For instance, if a professor of Linguistics who takes the stand to testify

as an expert witness replies with “I think Linguistics is probably the study of

language” to the question “What is Linguistics?”, his/her lack of assertiveness,

exhibited via the use of hedges, will strongly contradict with the professor’s status as

an expert witness. In fact, this answer is equally incongruous to a lay witness’s

tentative answer to a question (s)he is reasonably expected to be able to answer with

certainty, as in “what is your relationship with the defendant?”. Answering this

question with non-assertiveness as in “I think she is kind of my sister” would not only

be inappropriate and incongruous, but it would also be baffling to the audience, who

would probably resort to inferences to draw meaning out of a seemingly unnecessarily

complex statement. With that in mind, expert witnesses are by definition supposed to

be assertive, and therefore refrain from using linguistic features that have

stereotypically been associated with powerlessness and tentativeness. However, in

hostile, cross examination, even expert witnesses, may find themselves in a very
 Kokkaliari 29

stressful situation, with the opposing counsel challenging their results, their methods

or their very expertise. In Shuy’s (2003: 5-6) words:

For those who have never experienced cross-examination, there is no way to

emphasise how emotionally draining it can be. It can be quite like taking one’s

doctoral oral examinations all over again. Testifying is not for the weak at

heart.

Moreover, as Coulthard and Johnson (2007: 201) put it, “[n]ovice academic experts

may be deceived into thinking that they are still in an academic environment and that,

if they are sufficiently coherent and persuasive, they can convince the cross-examiner

of the correctness of their opinion”. However, cross-examiners, who do not need to

comply with the maxim of quality, may very well pretend that they are not convinced

for the sole purpose of constructing their own theory of events.

What expert witnesses have in common is their preoccupation with keeping their

professional or/and academic reputation and integrity intact, especially during cross

examination. They have been called to testify on the basis of their professional

expertise and thus, they need to defend their work. In this respect, both male and

female expert witnesses have more similarities with each other than they do with male

and female lay witnesses respectively.

The Study

This study aims to compare female witness testimony to male witness testimony, and

expert witness testimony to lay witness testimony on the basis of the presence of

“powerless” features. The testimonies (or parts of the testimonies) of eight witnesses

will be examined for the presence of features of “powerless speech” or “women’s

language”. Four of the witnesses, two men and two women are lay witnesses, and the
 Kokkaliari 30

remaining four, again two men and two women, are expert witnesses. All witnesses

are white, middle-class, U.S.A. citizens, residents of Florida at the time of the trial.

The witnesses were randomly selected out of a number of lay and expert witnesses,

with the sole criterion for their selection being the length of their testimony. Although

the videos of the trial are available online, the transcripts of the witness testimonies

are not available, so I transcribed the testimonies myself; hence, the relatively small

number of testimonies employed in this study. Taking the versatility of language into

consideration, this study aims to not restrict itself to a quantitative analysis of the

findings, but to also perform a qualitative analysis on the basis of the different

functions performed by the seemingly powerless features found in the witness

testimonies. Following O’Barr and Atkins’ (1980) classification, the witness

testimonies will be searched for the presence of hedges, including well, which has

been classified as a hesitation mark by O’Barr and Atkins, intensifiers and polite

forms, while the use of sir as a negative politeness marker will be examined

separately, due to its high frequency.

Findings and Discussion

The text of each testimony was entered into the MonoConcPro (2.2) concordance

software, so that word frequency and collocation data can be derived. Findings from

the lay witness testimonies are presented first.

Lay witnesses

1. George Anthony2

2
The names of the witnesses whose testimonies are examined in the current study are disclosed, due
to their high recognizability, in the light of the extreme publicity of the trial.
 Kokkaliari 31

The first lay witness testimony to be examined comes from George Anthony, the

defendant’s father, a middle-aged security guard. In the testimony selected for

examination, George Anthony is called on the stand by the defense, and is cross-

examined by the state. Nevertheless, prior to this testimony, George Anthony had also

given another testimony, as a witness for the state, direct examined by the state and

cross-examined by the defense. This testimony contains 147 replies, out of which 107

were given in direct examination and 40 were given in cross examination. The

witness’s answers totaled 2785 words in direct examination, and 802 words in cross

examination. Thus, Mr. Anthony’s average turn size is 26 words in direct examination

and 20 words in cross examination.

What is particularly interesting about this testimony is that the direct examination of

the witness is evidently more hostile than the witness’s cross examination. A

reasonable explanation for this exceptionally hostile direct examination is that this

particular witness is the main protagonist in the alternative version of events,

proposed by the defense: Casey Anthony’s defense was constructed upon the claim

that the child accidentally drowned in the pool and was found dead by George

Anthony. Therefore, the defense counsel treats this witness as a hostile witness, even

though he is called to the stand by the defense. For the duration of the hostile direct

examination, the asymmetrical power relation between counsel and witness is salient,

as the witness is constantly in a powerless position, where he is obliged to answer

questions that abound in face threatening acts.

Sir: The most characteristic “powerless” feature of this testimony is the preponderant

use of sir as a negative politeness marker. According to the concordance software, sir

is the most frequent content word in George Anthony’s testimony, and sixth in line,

preceded by ‘I’, ‘that’, ‘to’, ‘and’, and ‘the’. In total, there are 95 occurrences of the
 Kokkaliari 32

word sir, out of which 12 are found in cross examination. One out of the 83

occurrences of sir in direct examination, and 2 out of the 12 occurrences of sir in

cross examination are addressed to the judge, rather than the defense and state counsel

respectively. Thus, in direct examination the analogy between the word sir directed to

the examining counsel and the total number of words uttered by the witness would be

1/34, while in cross examination the analogy would be 1/80. In other words, the

occurrence of sir was more than twice as frequent in direct examination, compared to

cross examination. All twelve occurrences of sir in cross examination are directly

preceded by either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, i.e. ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’. However, in direct

examination we encounter an interesting pattern, which reflects Taylor’s (2006)

findings with regard to sir as a deference marker used in conjunction with a face

threatening act, as a device of interactional power. A characteristic example of sir

accompanying a face threatening act, taken from the testimony is “And for you to say

that I was doing something wrong sir, you are wrong!” Here, the face threatening act

is so explicit that the use of the negative politeness marker can hardly attenuate it.

This is evident in the counsel’s immediate reaction in the form of an objection to the

witness’s personal assault: “I object to the witness commenting on counsel’s

question”. Another example of a forceful face threatening act combined with sir is:

“How dare you, sir, try to tell me that I did something differently to what I did?”,

where the witness directly confronts the counsel, while at the same time he

acknowledges his deference towards the counsel, via the use of sir. Another

characteristic example of this pattern, which is also indicative of the exceptionally

hostile nature of this particular direct examination, is: “You are arguing with me sir,

I’m trying to be calm”.

 Kokkaliari 33

The witness also uses sir whenever he answers counsel’s questions containing

possible face threatening acts in the form of explicit or latent impeachments and

accusations, as in “Sir, I never would do anything like that to my daughter”, as an

answer to “You, of course, would never admit to molesting your child, would you

sir?” and “If that was at my deposition, sir, that’s-that’s what I said” as an answer to a

possible forthcoming impeachment contained in the counsel’s question “Do you recall

giving that answer?”. A similar noticeable pattern, which is also present in Taylor’s

(2006) findings, is the use of sir in answers expressing dispreferred disagreement to

the content of the question, as in “I don’t believe I said that, sir”. In this particular

example, the disagreement is prefaced by the hedge I don’t believe, which mitigates

the force of the disagreement.

When the child abuse issue is raised by the counsel for the first time, in the question

“And all of these media appearances stopped, when the allegations of abuse came up,

correct?” the witness replies “I believe that, sir, was done through you, sir”, using sir

twice in an utterance which happens to be initiated by another powerless feature, i.e.

the hedge I believe. The counsel’s question, which is in fact a statement disguised into

a tag question, apart from containing two presuppositions, namely that there were

allegations of abuse and that those allegations became public, also indirectly implies

that the reason why the witness stopped making media appearances was because the

allegations of abuse came up. The witness’s seemingly irrelevant answer “I believe

that, sir, was done through you sir” is a comment to the content of the

presuppositions, rather than an answer to the closed-ended, yes/no question. The

counsel uses the intransitive phrasal verb ‘came out’, with ‘allegations of abuse’ as its

subject, instead of using a verb in the passive voice, as in ‘when the allegations of

abuse were made’ or a transitive verb in the active voice, as in ‘when I made the
 Kokkaliari 34

allegations of abuse’. The effect of this is that it assigns agency to the subject

‘allegations of abuse’, by assigning animate properties to it, as if the allegations came

out by themselves. This structure is even more successful than the passive voice

structure in obscuring the existence of the human agent, since in the passive

equivalent ‘when the allegations of abuse were made’, the human agency is not

explicitly referred to, but it is implied by the passive transitive verb ‘were made’,

signaling that the identity of the person who put forward the allegations is not known

or is not important or that the speaker does not wish to disclose the agent’s identity.

The witness immediately grasps this effect, and instead of conforming to the structure

of the question, which calls for a yes or no answer, he chooses to comment on the

identity of the agent. Thus, by disclosing the identity of the agent who made the

allegations of abuse, namely (according to the witness) the defense counsel himself,

he directs the jurors’ attention to the potential unreliability of the source from which

the allegations emanated, since the defense counsel, as a representative of the

defendant, has the right to lie for the purpose of defending his client and protecting his

client’s interests. Therefore, although on first glance, his answer may appear to violate

the maxim of relevance, it is relevant to the extent that it refers to the obscured agency

of the act described in the question. The witness’s utterance may be considered as an

extreme example of lack of assertiveness, because it contains powerless features in its

entirety: a) ‘I believe’, used as a hedge, since it is not used to add subjectivity to the

expression of an opinion, but it is rather employed as a means to mitigate the force of

the proposition conveyed through the utterance; b) ‘sir’, used twice within the same

utterance, which adds negative politeness in the form of deference to the utterance

and; c) the use of passive voice ‘was done through you’ instead of the more direct

active voice ‘you did that’, which, although it is not enlisted among the features of
 Kokkaliari 35

“powerless speech” or “women’s language”, according to Brown and Levinson (1987:

70), functions as an “impersonalizing mechanism” which distances the interlocutors

from the act. In this case, within a single utterance, we encounter markers of

“linguistic deference”, “hedges on the illocutionary force of the act” and

“impersonalizing mechanisms”, which according to Brown and Levinson (1987: 70)

function as “softening mechanisms” whose purpose is to redress potential face

threatening acts, within the realm of negative politeness. Thus, the whole utterance

creates a more polite, and hence, according to Lakoff (1975) and O’Barr and Atkins

(1980) a less assertive effect to an otherwise bold deviation from what would be the

conventional answer to a yes/no question.

Apart from the deference marker sir, which is abundantly used by Mr. Anthony in his

testimony, especially under hostile, direct examination, no other politeness marker is

employed.

Sentimental tone: An interesting feature in George Anthony’s testimony is that he

repeatedly refers to the defendant as “my daughter”. According to the concordancer,

the word ‘daughter’ has 29 matches, while ‘my daughter’ has 23 matches. In terms of

frequency, ‘daughter’ is the second most frequent content word in the testimony, after

‘sir’. The witness, thus, adds a rather dramatic and sentimental tone to his testimony,

emphasizing the blood relation that connects him with the defendant. Interestingly,

the single occasion where he does not refer to the defendant as “my daughter”, but

uses her name instead, in “And Casey was the last one that I saw with Caylee”, which

is a rather incriminating statement, implying that Casey had something to do with the

disappearance of Caylee. Here, the use of “Casey” rather than “my daughter”

indicates that in this particular instance, the witness wishes to refrain from

emphasizing the kinship relation that connects him with the defendant. The
 Kokkaliari 36

sentimental and dramatic tone of his speech is also enhanced by the use of questions

directed to himself, as in “was I upset and falling apart at the moment?” and answered

by himself: “Absolutely”. In fact, there are six instances of questions addressed to

himself, all in direct examination, while there are two instances of questions for

clarification such as “Are you asking me to open this?” and two instances of rather

rhetorical questions as in “So, that’s answering your question, sir?” and “How dare

you, sir, try to tell me that I did something differently to what I did?”.

Hedges: There are 11 occurrences of I believe, out of which 7 are found in direct

examination, and 4 are found in cross examination. The majority of the I believe

instances are used in a tentative manner, expressing lack of certainty, which is further

highlighted by the fact that in some cases, I believe is followed by another hedge, as

in “I believe probably 10 days, or so”, “And I also believe, if I’m not mistaken”, “I

believe it was probably the 2nd or 3rd of September”. In “’Cause I believe I failed

her”, in cross examination, I believe is used in a deliberative manner (Holmes, 1986),

to express a strong opinion. In 4 other instances, in direct examination i.e. in “I

believe that, sir, was done through you, sir”, “Sir, that answer, I believe, speaks for

itself “, “I believe, sir, I was shown a bunch of different things that day”, and “I

believe I’ve answered that on a few different occasions sir”, I believe, together with

the deference marker sir functions as a negative politeness marker, to mitigate the

force of a potential face threatening act, rather than to express pure uncertainty. In “I

know I was shown, at least I believe to my best recollection that I was shown another

photograph”, the witness exhibits metapragmatic knowledge in that he recognizes that

I believe expresses a lesser degree of certainty compared to I know, and he self-

repairs, changing I know into I believe, and further hedging his utterance with “at

least” and “to my best recollection”, thus denoting that he is almost, but not entirely
 Kokkaliari 37

certain. There is also 1 occurrence of I don’t believe, in direct examination, in “I don’t

believe I said that, sir”. In this case, the hedge I don’t believe, in combination with the

deference marker sir attenuates the force of a dispreferred disagreement, by means of

politeness.

There are also 2 instances of I think, the first being “I think I’ve done that very well”,

which occurred in direct examination, and the second being “I think after about 2 or 3

days”, which occurred in cross examination. The first instance of I think seems to be

expressed in a deliberative, rather than tentative manner (Holmes, 1986), expressing

the speaker’s confidence, since it is followed by an intensifier, i.e. ‘very well’. The

second example can be classified as a hedge, as it denotes the speaker’s uncertainty as

to the exact number of days, which is further highlighted by the use of ‘about’ and

‘or’.

The hedges possibly and probably occur 8 times and 5 times respectively. All

instances of possibly are found in hostile direct examination, and 2 out of the 5

instances of probably occur in friendly cross examination. In the majority of the

instances found, possibly and probably are followed by expressions denoting

uncertainty, as in “It possibly did, I don’t remember”, “possibly I did, I’m not really

sure”. The hedge maybe occurs 3 times, in direct examination, all in the same turn.

Kind of occurs only once, in direct examination, and it is used as a negative politeness

marker, directly preceding ‘have to’ in “You kind of have to come up with dates, sir”.

Here, kind of together with sir, is used to mitigate the force of ‘have to’, which is

quite an assertive utterance, especially if we take into account that it is produced by

the powerless party of this asymmetric power relation, and is directed towards the

powerful party.
 Kokkaliari 38

Intensifiers: There are 14 occurrences of intensifiers in the witness’s testimony. In

direct examination, the witness uses 11 intensifiers: absolutely (4), very (2), a

hundred percent positive (1), so (1), certainly (1), definitely (1), completely (1). In

cross examination, there are 3 occurrences of intensifiers, namely absolutely, very and

definitely, each occurring once.

Hyper-correct speech: During cross examination, there was a proffer of the witness’s

testimony, i.e. a presentation of the witness’s examination in the absence of the jurors.

The judge accepted the proffer, and, so, the content of the proffer was repeated, this

time with the jurors present. In the proffer, the witness, upon describing the events

evolving around a suicide attempt that he made, referred to a suicide letter that he

wrote prior to his attempt to commit suicide, and used the rather incongruously formal

word ‘penmanship’, although he failed to successfully incorporate it into a

grammatical sentence: “I do know that my penmanship throughout, at the beginning,

at the end. I wrote over many hours that night”. When he was asked the same

question in the presence of the jury, he used the word ‘penmanship’ again, but he was

still unable to incorporate it into a grammatically acceptable sentence: “All I know is

there was numerous pages I wrote, and I know that my-my penmanship, so I probably

repeated myself numerous times”. This reflects the findings in Conley et al.’s (1978)

study with regard to the use of hyper-correct speech by lay witnesses. According to

Conley et al. (1978), witnesses who tried to speak in a style which was much more

formal than their custom style, tended to commit numerous grammatical and lexical

errors. In Conley et al.’s words (1978: 1389), “[w]itnesses who used this

“hypercorrect” style did not achieve the formal style intended, but instead spoke in a

stilted and unnatural manner”. The witness uses excessively formal vocabulary in

three other instances, which are all found in the same turn. In the first instance, he
 Kokkaliari 39

self-repairs, using the more formal verb “retrieved” instead of “picked”: “When I had

picked-retrieved the gun up”. In this case, he erroneously uses the preposition ‘up’

which colligates with ‘pick’, but not with ‘retrieve’, i.e. the verb he ultimately

selected. In the following excerpt, he employs two formal words within the same

sentence, i.e. “purchased” and “incarcerated”: “they told me that they had found out

that I had purchased a firearm, and that was a violation of firearm being in the home,

or alcohol being around someone who is incarcerated in my home”. In this example,

both “purchased” and “incarcerated” are grammatically incorporated into the

sentence, although they contradict with the rather informal, and in this case

problematic “in my home”, which is more specific than required.

In total, George Anthony’s testimony exhibits 137 powerless features, out of which

117 occur in hostile, direct examination, and 20 occur in friendly cross examination.

The ratio between the total number of words and the occurrences of powerless

features would be 3587/137, or 1/26 for the whole testimony, 2785/117, or 1/23 for

direct examination, and 802/20, or 1/40 for cross examination. This corresponds to

38.2 instances per 1000 words in total, 42 instances per 1000 words for direct

examination, and 24.9 words per 1000 words for cross examination. Thus, in George

Anthony’s testimony, powerless features are almost twice as frequent in direct

examination, which, in this case, is more hostile than cross examination. Therefore, it

seems that the more hostile the examination, the more powerless the witness’s

position and the more frequent the powerless features that occur.

2. Lee Anthony

Lee Anthony is the defendant’s brother. At the time of the trial he was 28 years old

and unemployed. Two different testimonies of this witness are included in the current
 Kokkaliari 40

study. In the first testimony he was called to testify by the state. He was examined in

direct examination by state counsel Frank George, and was cross examined by

defense counsel Dorothy Clay Sims. The first testimony contains 253 replies, out of

which 222 were given in direct examination and 31 were given in cross examination.

The witness’s answers totaled 2197 words in direct examination, and 158 words in

cross examination. Thus, Lee Anthony’s average turn size in the first testimony was

9.8 words in direct examination, and 5 words in cross examination. In the second

testimony, the witness was called to the stand by the defense. He was examined in

direct examination by defense counsel Jose Baez, and in cross examination by state

counsel Jeff Ashton. In the part of the second testimony that was transcribed and used

in the current study, the witness gave 79 replies in total, out of which 41 were in

direct examination, and 38 were in cross examination. The second testimony includes

596 words in direct examination, and 667 words in cross examination. Therefore, in

the second testimony, the average turn size of this witness is 14.5 words in direct

examination and 17.5 words in cross examination. The total average turn size for both

testimonies is 10.6 in direct examination and 11.9 in cross examination.

Hedges: The most dominant “powerless” feature in this witness’s testimonies is the

abundant use of hedges. There are 94 total instances of hedges in both testimonies, out

of which 78 appear in direct examination and 16 appear in cross examination. There

are 22 occurrences of you know throughout the two testimonies. You know occurs 18

times in direct examination of the first testimony, 3 times in direct examination of the

second testimony and only once in cross examination of the second testimony. As

Holmes (1986) explicates in “Functions of You Know in Women’s and Men’s

Speech”, you know fulfills numerous different functions both expressing certainty and

uncertainty. Holmes (1986) distinguishes the instances of you know that express
 Kokkaliari 41

uncertainty into two categories. The first category contains instances of you know

which are used to appeal to the addressee for reassurance in cases when the speaker

shares personal information or embarrassing experiences with the addressee, as well

as in cases when the speaker makes negative comments, even for people who are not

present, since according to Holmes, negative comments “can always be perceived as a

threat, however oblique, to the fabric of social relationships” (1986: 10). In the latter

case, as Holmes suggests, you know is used as a mitigating device, and “appeals to the

addressee for a sympathetic response” (1986: 10). According to Holmes (1986), it is

this appealing function of you know that Lakoff (1975) had in mind when she talked

about the excessive use of hedges by women. The second category contains instances

of you know signaling “linguistic imprecision”, reflecting the speaker’s uncertainty

with regard to the “linguistic expression of the proposition” (Holmes, 1986: 10).

Holmes (1986: 10-11) further specifies three sub-categories of the use of you know as

an indication of linguistic imprecision, namely “signaling lexical imprecision”, where

you know expresses the speaker’s uncertainty with regard to the next word;

“introducing qualifying information”, where you know signals the speaker’s

acknowledgment that further clarification or more precision is required and;

“indicating false start”, in which case, you know marks a syntactic change, reflecting

the speaker’s awareness that the utterance needs to be reformulated. In all three sub-

categories, you know serves as an appeal to the addressee for tolerance as the speaker

strives to achieve linguistic precision.

In the direct examination of the first testimony, there are four instances of you know,

together with one instance of the hedging verb I guess, within a single turn, which

seem to signal the speaker’s struggle to search for the right word: “It was something

along the lines of (0.2) this is what she’s been (0.1) you know used to and I don’t
 Kokkaliari 42

wanna (0.2) you know change that. I interpreted that as a you know sleeping routine

throughout the (0.1) you know for I guess some time leading up to that point”. The

last you know is indicative of the speaker’s strenuous search for the right word; a

search from which he ultimately resigns, as he fails to come up with a suitable

continuation of the phrase directly preceding you know, and thus, he finally self-

repairs using a different structure. This instance of you know clearly corresponds to

the function of you know described by Holmes (1986: 11) as indicating a false start,

where you know is a marker of “a change of syntactic direction”. The other three

instances of you know seem to be associated with signaling lexical imprecision, rather

than appealing to the addressee’s sympathy. The speaker’s struggle for precise self-

articulation throughout the turn is further signaled by the presence of pauses directly

before you know in all but one case. Therefore, the preponderant use of you know

seems to express that the speaker has trouble articulating himself properly, and may

consequently be seen as a sign of anxiety and stress, or merely linguistic uncertainty.

It is worth to be noted here that the first sentence of the witness’s turn is a direct

quotation, which is also seen as a powerless feature by O’Barr and Atkins (1980).

However, the witness resorts to you know even when narrating in reported speech:

“she was already you know asleep for the evening and she didn’t wanna you know

disturb her”. There is one instance of you know, where it is used to signal the

introduction of clarifying information: “so I guess her demeanor was determined or,

you know, she had it under control”. Finally, there is only one instance of you know

that appears to be used in an appealing manner, for the purpose of gaining the

addressees’ sympathy, where the witness, sobbing, expresses his personal feelings

towards his family’s not informing him about his sister’s pregnancy: “I don’t think I

wanted to believe it, you know”. As Holmes (1986) notes, it is typical for instances of
 Kokkaliari 43

appealing you know to occur in an utterance-final position. If we assume that the

witness is in a more powerless position during cross examination, rather than direct

examination, then these results suggest that you know may not necessarily be

associated with lack of power, since in the most hostile examination of all four, i.e. in

the cross examination of the second testimony, the witness resorts to you know only

once.

There are 9 instances of kind of, 6 of which are found in direct examination (4 in the

first and 2 in the second testimony) and 3 in cross examination (all found in the

second testimony). In two out of the three occurrences of kind of in cross examination,

the witness uses kind of within utterances which are rather informal and do not strictly

fall within the testimony. The first one is incorporated into a question for clarification

containing a personal comment of the witness “I just kind of started in the middle, so

would you like me to read that entire page?” and the second one is again used within a

personal comment “Sorry, I’m just reading my last paragraph ‘cause I kind of ramble

in there, so it’s hard to get my point”. The only instance of kind of in cross

examination that is uttered as part of the actual testimony is “I just said something of

kinda what the hell is that, in passing”. In this case, kind of might serve as a means to

attenuate the potential offensiveness of “what the hell is that”, and can thus be

interpreted as a negative politeness marker (Brown & Levinson, 1987), which would

be a legitimate case of a hedge according to Lakoff (1975), since its use is governed

by politeness. In the phrase “she was in her car kind of watching the place I guess”,

the witness uses two hedges, i.e. kind of and I guess. Here, kind of in combination

with I guess, mitigates the force of the proposition conveyed through the utterance

and reduces the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the utterance, which can

partially be explained by the fact that at this particular point the witness does not
 Kokkaliari 44

narrate an event he witnessed himself, but he refers to his sister’s actions as they were

reported to him by his sister.

There are 13 occurrences of I believe and 8 occurrences of I don’t believe, most of

which appear to be of tentative, rather than deliberative nature, which denotes that the

speaker is not entirely certain about the content of the proposition, or that he does not

want to fully commit himself to the truth of the proposition. In the first testimony I

believe occurs 10 times in direct examination, while in the second testimony, it occurs

once in direct examination and twice in cross examination. I don’t believe appears

only in the first testimony, 7 times in direct examination and once in cross

examination. Hedges entail a degree of doubt as to the truthfulness of the proposition

and they thus allow the speaker to legitimately back out from the proposition

expressed. For example, upon saying “I don’t believe I got to speak to her again”, the

witness does not fully commit himself to the fact he presents, and can, thus, easily

back out from it, by saying e.g. “but I may be wrong” or “in fact, I spoke to her one

more time”, whereas if his initial utterance was “I didn’t speak to her again” or “I’m

sure I didn’t speak to her again”, then his backing out with “but I may be wrong”

would be incongruous. Within the realm of generalized conversational implicature, in

particular clausal implicature, according to Levinson (1983: 136) the use of a weaker

linguistic expression instead of a stronger one which would commit the speaker to the

“embedded proposition” gives rise to the implicature that the speaker is not in “the

(epistemic) position to make the stronger statement”. Levinson (1983) uses I believe

utterances versus I know utterances as an example of how clausal implicatures work.

To use an example from the witness’s testimony, the witness by choosing to say “I

believe my first attempt was via a text message” instead of “I know my first attempt

was via a text message” implicates that there is a chance that his first attempt was not
 Kokkaliari 45

via a text message. Thus, if it later turns out that the witness’s first attempt to reach

his sister was via a phone call, rather than a text message, and the witness is

subsequently confronted with providing false information, he will be able to defend

himself on the basis of the weaker commitment conveyed via I believe. The same

holds for verbs denoting even fainter commitment such as I think, I guess, I suppose

etc.

In “I believe so, yes” and in “I don’t believe she did at that time, no”, the witness

starts out with the hedge, but concludes his utterance using the unhedged powerful

form ‘yes’ and ‘no’ respectively. Thus, in those instances, although the witness

initially opts for a weaker commitment to the proposition he finally switches to the

strong version of the proposition.

The hedge I believe in “I believe I made some kind of comment towards Casey that

said like, excuse me, what the hell is that”, functions in a quite similar manner to the

hedge kind of in “I just said something of kinda what the hell is that, in passing”,

described above. In this case, the use of I believe, in combination with the rather

vague “some kind of comment”, the hedge like and the negative politeness marker

excuse me, does not necessarily reflect the witness’s uncertainty, but rather attenuates

the force of the potential face threatening act, expressed via the verbatim reproduction

of the witness’s comment to his sister “what the hell is that”. Therefore, in this

instance, the use of I believe can be interpreted as being associated with politeness,

rather than uncertainty.

However, in many of the occurrences, the data alone are insufficient when it comes to

deciphering the speaker’s intention that underlies the use of these hedges. The context

alone does not help us determine whether the use of I believe and I don’t believe is
 Kokkaliari 46

guided by the witness’s true uncertainty, or by the witness’s non-assertiveness, which

is dictated by the witness’s powerlessness. An example that can be interpreted as an

instance of feigned uncertainty, perhaps guided by the witness’s powerlessness,

especially if we take into consideration that it appears in cross examination, is “I

believe that was the impression that I was under”. Here, the witness mitigates a

statement which can be verified by no one but himself, since it refers to his own

impression, rather than a verifiable fact.

I think occurs 6 times, only in the first testimony, 4 times in direct and 2 times in cross

examination. I don’t think occurs twice, once in direct examination of the first

testimony and once in direct examination of the second testimony. Similar to the use

of I believe and I don’t believe, the use of I think and I don’t think also appears to be

tentative rather than deliberative. This is corroborated by the use of other mitigating

expressions accompanying I think, such as ‘may’ in “Initially I think I may have just

gotten one phone call from her”, or expressions denoting uncertainty, such as

‘something like that’ in “I think she eventually hung up on me or something like that”,

or expressions denoting that the speaker’s memory is poor, such as ‘I don’t

remember’ in “I don’t remember exactly when I was in Chicago, I actually think it

was more on June”.

I guess occurs 4 times only in direct testimony, 3 times in the first and once in the

second testimony. I guess demonstrates an even lesser degree of certainty and

commitment to the proposition compared to I think and I believe. An interesting

example of an utterance containing I guess is “’cause I hadn’t-I guess I just hadn’t

noticed it prior to that”, where the witness initially attempts to produce an unhedged

statement and then, immediately self-repairs into the hedged version of the statement,

using I guess.
 Kokkaliari 47

I mean occurs 4 times, in total: twice in the first testimony, with both instances found

in direct examination, and twice in the second testimony, i.e. once in direct

examination and once in cross examination. In one of those four instances, I mean is

directly preceded by the hedge well: “Well, I mean throughout the evening”, which

adds to the tentative effect it produces.

There are 5 instances of maybe, in total. Four instances are found in direct

examination of the first testimony, all indicative of the witness’s uncertainty or

inability to produce a straightforward answer. One occurrence of maybe which does

not demonstrate the speaker’s uncertainty, but is rather used within an indirect request

towards the examining counsel for the sake of politeness, is found in cross

examination of the second testimony, in “maybe if you refer to date or time or

something”. There are 4 occurrences of probably, out of which 3 are found in direct

examination of the first testimony and 1 is found in direct examination of the second

testimony. There are 3 instances of may, one in direct examination of the first

testimony, one in cross examination of the first testimony, and one in direct

examination of the second testimony. In the first occurrence, may is accompanied by

an expression demonstrating that the speaker’s memory is poor: “I may have, I don’t

recall”. In the second occurrence, may is preceded by the hedge I think: “Initially, I

think I may have just gotten one phone call from her”, which adds to the fuzziness of

the statement. Interestingly, in the third occurrence of may there is an oxymoron,

since may is directly preceded by ‘I’m sure’, which is a strong linguistic expression

and contradicts with the uncertainty conveyed by may: “I’m sure I may have”. There

is only one instance of might, in direct examination of the first testimony in “At some

point I might became aware of it, but I was not aware of it at the time”. Here, might in

combination with the vague expression ‘at some point’ increases the vagueness of the
 Kokkaliari 48

witness’s statement. Approximately occurs three times in total: once in direct

examination of the first testimony and twice in direct examination of the second

testimony. About occurs only in the first testimony, 4 times in direct and 1 time in

cross examination.

In the first testimony well occurs 4 times in direct and once in cross examination,

while in the second testimony it occurs twice in cross examination. According to

Sacks (1987: 59) well, when used utterance-initially in an answer turn signals a

forthcoming disagreement, or “something less than an agreement”. Taylor (2006)

suggests that witnesses may use well in turn-initial position to indicate that they are

unable to answer the question as it was formulated by the counsel. Out of the 7 total

occurrences of well, 4 instances occur turn-initially, but only 1 can be interpreted as a

form of disagreement to the question preceding it. When the witness is impeached by

the cross examining state counsel, on the basis of a contradiction between his current

testimony and a prior testimony “So, in July of 2009, you indicated that you did not

say anything directly to her about it, but your testimony here today was that you

did?”, he answers with well in turn-initial position: “Well, sir I also did not call her

out on it when she showed up at the airport to pick me up”. In this case, the counsel’s

question contains the presupposition that the particular part of the July 2009 testimony

to which the counsel refers, involves the same incident as the one mentioned in the

current testimony. It is this very presupposition that the witness opposes against, using

well to signal a challenge to the presupposition, and therefore, a disagreement. There

is a similar impeachment, although substantially milder, in direct examination, where

the witness is asked “Do you recall ever saying that it was much longer than that?” to

which the witness answers, beginning his turn with well, but he produces an

agreement, rather than a disagreement: “Well, I mean throughout the evening, but at
 Kokkaliari 49

that juncture it was a couple of minutes.” Similarly, in “Well, yeah, I’m doing my

best” well prefaces an agreement. Well may also precede a self-repair as in “While I

was in court the-well, the last time that I was in court”.

Intensifiers: In total, 18 intensifiers are contained in the 2 testimonies of the witness.

In the first testimony, 5 intensifiers are used in direct examination, namely very (4)

and pretty (1), and 2 intensifiers are used in cross examination, namely definitely and

absolutely. In the second testimony, the witness uses 6 intensifiers in direct

examination, i.e. absolutely (2), definitely (1), brutally (1) and very (2) and 5

intensifiers in cross examination, i.e. quite (2), so (1), absolutely (1), very (1).

Politeness markers: The witness uses 11 negative politeness markers in the second

testimony. In direct examination, there are 4 instances of I’m sorry, 1 instance of

excuse me and 1 instance of I apologize. In cross examination, there are 2 instances of

thank you, 1 instance of I apologize, 1 instance of I appreciate it and 1 instance of

sorry. In the first testimony, there are only 2 negative politeness markers, namely

excuse me in direct examination and I’m sorry in cross examination, although in this

case I’m sorry is used within a request for repetition.

Sir: There are 27 occurrences of the word sir found in both testimonies, and one

occurrence of ma’am, directed to the cross examining defense counsel Dorothy Sims

in the first testimony. Eleven out of the 27 occurrences of sir were found in the cross

examination conducted by the state counsel in the second testimony, while only 2

occurrences of sir were addressed to the direct examining defense counsel in the same

testimony. The remaining 14 instances of sir were found in direct examination of the

first testimony; however, this is a rather insignificant number, given the large size of

the testimony, since the ratio between the word sir and the total number of words
 Kokkaliari 50

would be 14/2197, or 1/156. The analogy for the use of sir in the second testimony

would be 1/258 for direct examination and 1/60 for cross examination. Given the

hostile nature of cross examination in the second testimony, and the consequent

subordination of the witness to a more powerless position, these results appear to

suggest that the use of sir increases as the position of the witness becomes more

powerless. Unlike George Anthony, Lee Anthony only uses the deference marker sir

within the expression yes sir/no sir. There is only one occasion where he employs sir

outside the yes sir/no sir structure in: “Well, sir I also did not call her out on it when

she showed up at the airport to pick me up, and it was quite obvious at that point as

well”. This is in reply to the cross examining counsel’s impeaching him with a

contradictory prior statement: “So, in July of 2009, you indicated that you did not say

anything directly to her about it, but your testimony here today was that you did?”. In

this case, sir is used in an utterance initiated with the hedge (or hesitation form, for

O’Barr and Atkins and Conley et al.) well, which is typically used turn-initially to

preface a disagreement. Here, the witness defends himself against the counsel’s

impeachment by indicating that the contradictory statement, on the basis of which he

is impeached by the counsel, may be referring to another, similar event.

In total, Lee Anthony’s testimony exhibits 153 powerless features, out of which 112

occur in direct examination, and 41 occur in cross examination. The ratio between the

total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be 3618/153,

or 1/23 for the whole testimony, 2793/112, or 1/25 for direct examination, and

825/41, or 1/20 for cross examination. This corresponds to 42.2 instances per 1000

words in total, 40.1 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 49.7 words

per 1000 words for cross examination. Therefore, in Lee Anthony’s testimony,

powerless features are more frequent in cross examination than in direct examination,
 Kokkaliari 51

which is indicative of the fact that he is in a more powerless position, while being

cross examined.

3. Cindy Anthony

Cindy Anthony is the defendant’s mother. She is middle-aged, a former employee in a

healthcare company, unemployed at the time of the trial. Two separate testimonies of

Cindy Anthony are examined in the current study. In both testimonies she was called

to testify by the defense, and in both testimonies she was examined in direct

examination by the defense counsel Jose Baez, and cross examined by the state

counsel Linda Drane Burdick. The first testimony includes 171 replies, out of which

81 were given in direct examination and 90 were given in cross examination. The

witness’s answers totaled 1159 words in direct examination, and 873 words in cross

examination. Thus, the witness’s average turn size is 14 words in direct and 9.7 words

in cross examination. In the part of the second testimony that was transcribed and

used in the current study, the witness gave 45 replies in total, out of which 31 were in

direct examination, and 14 were in cross examination. The second testimony contains

749 words in direct examination, and 380 words in cross examination. Here, the

witness’s average turn size is 24 words in direct and 27 words in cross examination.

Thus, the witness’s total average turn size for both testimonies is 17 words in direct

examination and 12 words in cross examination.

A characteristic trait of this witness’s testimonies is that she has some long turns

which exhibit few or even no instances of powerless features. For example, her

longest turn, comprising 278 words, contains only 4 instances of powerless speech. In

other relatively long turns comprising 112, 109, 58, 57 or 52 words, she exhibits no

powerless features whatsoever.

 Kokkaliari 52

Hedges: The most frequent hedging verb in Cindy Anthony’s testimony is I mean.

There are 12 occurrences of I mean, 6 in direct and 6 in cross examination. In this

witness’s testimony, I mean often signals linguistic imprecision, functioning in a

similar manner as the one described by Holmes (1986) for you know. Thus, the

witness uses I mean to introduce a self-repair, which is necessitated by lexical

imprecision, as in “we used to have a pool deck, I mean a pool box, a deck box, right

next to the pool”, or “I also had a computer access, I mean, access password to my

emails”. In some cases, which again reflect Holmes’s (1986) findings about a

particular function of you know, the witness uses I mean to signal her awareness that

more precise or clarifying information is needed, as in “Yeah, I mean, it looks like the

trunk of a car, and the car looks like it’s white”. In the last but one question preceding

this answer, the direct examining counsel has shown the witness a photograph of the

trunk of the defendant’s car, asking her if she recognizes it, to which the witness

replies with a non-assertive statement. The counsel, then, zooms out the photograph to

make it easier for the witness to recognize what it depicts, and asks her “Does that

help?”, to which the witness replies with the answer above. Thus, “yeah” is intended

as an answer to “Does that help?” and I mean, which follows directly after that,

indicates the witness’s realization that more information is required. A similar

example is “Those weren’t shorts that I dressed Caylee in, quite a bit. I mean, there

was quite a few things that I didn’t dress Caylee in, and that outfit was not one of my

favorite outfits”, where I mean signals that more information will follow. In other

cases, the witness uses I mean to preface a self-repair, which is necessitated by the

witness’s realization that she has provided inaccurate or false information, as in “I

started looking up chloroform-I mean, chlorophyll” or “Within 2 hours, I mean-

excuse me, within two weeks after I started working”. In one instance, the witness
 Kokkaliari 53

uses I mean to signal a self-repair from a strong, assertive expression to a slightly less

strong one: “we always, I mean, I’m 99 point sure that we put shoes on her”, where

the witness expresses a small speck of doubt.

I believe occurs 3 times, twice in direct and once in cross examination. I think occurs

5 times, 4 times in direct and once in cross examination, and I don’t think occurs

once, in cross examination. All instances of I believe and I think/I don’t think appear

to be tentative, rather than deliberative. There is also one instance of I would imagine,

indicating the speaker’s uncertainty about the truthfulness of her proposition. I guess

occurs twice, in direct examination. In one of the two instances of I guess, the witness

produces an extremely non-assertive statement: “I’m guessing that it looks like it

could be the trunk of the Sunfire”. The witness’s non-assertiveness gets immediately

commented upon by the direct examining counsel, who replies “Well, I don’t want

you to guess”. It is typical for direct examining counsels to want their witnesses to be

assertive, as they rely upon them to build up their case before the members of the jury.

There are 2 instances of kind of and 1 instance of sort of, in direct examination. In

both instances of kind of, the witness is describing a particular skirt of hers which

“kind of was out of date after that” and “was kind of like not popular after that”. In

these cases, kind of mitigates the old-fashionedness of the skirt. Maybe occurs twice

in direct examination, with both instances found in the same turn: “I can’t remember

when I put pool together, it was probably sometime maybe March or April. So, she

probably would have swum maybe 3 to 4 times a week”. Here, maybe is followed by

2 different options in both of its instances, i.e. “March or April” and “3 to 4 times a

week”, and in combination with probably, which also occurs twice in this turn, it

expresses the speaker’s “message-oriented uncertainty” (Holmes, 1986: 7). Apart

from these 2 occurrences of probably, there is one more occurrence in direct

 Kokkaliari 54

examination, and 2 occurrences in cross examination, all of which exhibit the

witness’s uncertainty as to the content of the message she conveys, as in “It was

probably to Debbie, or Charles, or both”. May occurs twice, once in direct

examination in “She may have been an inch taller”, and once in cross examination in

“she may have worn them after”. In both cases, may expresses the witness’s lack of

certainty as to the truthfulness of her proposition. Might occurs 3 times, in direct

testimony. In the first two instances, which both occur in the same turn, i.e. “she

might have been a little bit taller” and “so it might be the accurate height”, the witness

uses might to express her uncertainty regarding the exact height of her deceased

granddaughter. Could, as an epistemic modal denoting the witness’s weak

commitment to the truthfulness of the proposition, occurs 3 times, i.e. once in cross

examination and twice in direct examination. Finally, there are 2 occurrences of it’s

possible in cross examination. In the first one, “It’s possible, yes”, the witness starts

her turn using It’s possible, which is a weaker linguistic expression in terms of

certainty, and then directly shifts to a stronger expression, i.e. ‘yes’. However, it

appears that the lack of certainty conveyed via the use of It’s possible, despite the

subsequent use of ‘yes’, prompts the cross examining counsel to repeat her question,

demanding a clearer answer.

There are 7 occurrences of you know, 3 in direct examination and 4 in cross

examination, all of which seem to signal linguistic imprecision (Holmes, 1986). With

the exception of “It looks-it’s up, you know, it looks like it could be a diaper”, which

indicates a false start, i.e. the speaker’s awareness that she needs to reformulate her

utterance, all other instances of you know signal lexical imprecision.

Intensifiers: In total, there are 11 occurrences of intensifiers in both testimonies.

Under direct examination, the witness uses 5 intensifiers, namely quite, absolutely,
 Kokkaliari 55

very, so, extremely, pretty. Under cross examination the witness uses 6 intensifiers,

i.e. pretty (2), absolutely (2), and quite.

Politeness markers: There are 4 occurrences of negative politeness markers in the

witness’s speech, all found in cross examination. There are 2 instances of I’m sorry

and 2 instances of excuse me. One instance of excuse me and one instance of I’m

sorry are incorporated within questions for clarifications. The other instance of excuse

me precedes a self-repair, and in the other instance of I’m sorry the witness expresses

her apology for misunderstanding the counsel’s question.

Sir/Ma’am: When direct examined by the defense counsel Jose Baez, the witness

never addresses the counsel as ‘sir’, so throughout Cindy Anthony’s testimonies, there

is no occurrence of the deference marker sir. Nevertheless, the witness addresses the

cross examining counsel, Linda Drane Burdick as ma’am in 10 different occurrences,

all of which are within the expression yes ma’am/no ma’am.

In total, Cindy Anthony’s testimony exhibits 75 powerless features, out of which 36

occur in direct examination, and 39 occur in cross examination. The ratio between the

total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be 3161/75, or

1/42 for the whole testimony, 1908/36, or 1/53 for direct examination, and 1253/39,

or 1/32 for cross examination. This corresponds to 23.7 instances per 1000 words in

total, 18.8 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 31.1 words per 1000

words for cross examination. Thus, in Cindy Anthony’s testimony, powerless features

are more frequent in cross examination than in direct examination, which is consistent

with the assumption that witnesses are in a more powerless position, while they

undergo cross examination.

4. Amy Huizenga
 Kokkaliari 56

Amy Huizenga is a former friend of the defendant’s. At the time of the trial, she was

26 years old and she was employed as a stage technician. This witness was called to

testify by the state. In direct examination, she was examined by the state counsel

Frank George, and in cross examination, she was examined by the defense counsel

Jose Baez. The testimony contains 347 replies, out of which 271 were given in direct

examination and 76 were given in cross examination. The witness’s answers totaled

2680 words in direct examination, and 463 words in cross examination. Thus, the

witness’s average turn size is 9.8 words in direct and 6 words in cross examination.

This small turn size, especially in cross examination is indicative of the fact that the

questions directed to the witness were mainly yes/no questions, which did not allow

the witness much freedom to elaborate.

Hedges: There are 3 occurrences of I think in direct examination, all of which appear

to be of tentative nature, denoting message-oriented uncertainty. In one of the

occurrences of I think, its tentativeness is highlighted by the co-occurrence of the

hedge about, and by the speaker’s rising intonation, the so-called uptalk, which makes

the utterance sound like a question, rather than a statement: “I think it was about a

week before?”. I don’t think appears 5 times in total, twice in direct examination and

3 times in cross examination. Contrary to I think, I don’t think is used by the witness

in a deliberative, rather than tentative manner. For example, in cross examination,

when the witness is asked by the counsel whether she was drinking and driving, when

she had a car accident, she replies “I don’t think that’s relevant”, and then she

explains that by the time she entered her car, she had “sobered up”. At another point,

when she is asked by the cross examining counsel whether she went out almost every

night, she replies “I don’t think it was almost every night, I’m sure I wasn’t going to
 Kokkaliari 57

afford that”. Here, the co-occurrence of I don’t think and ‘I’m sure’ indicates that the

witness is expressing a firm belief.

The witness’s testimony exhibits 3 occurrences of I believe, all found in direct

examination. Two of the instances of I believe convey the witness’s lack of certainty.

In the first instance, this is corroborated by the positioning of I believe in the middle

of the utterance, as well as the speaker’s rising intonation: “That occurred, I believe

June 5th, 6th?”, while in the second instance, the speaker’s uncertainty is highlighted

by the utterance-final position of I believe: “I left July 8, I believe”. I don’t believe

occurs four times, twice in direct examination and twice in cross examination. In “I

don’t believe we actually went out-out”, I don’t believe appears to be tentative, since

in this particular statement, the witness does not state an opinion, but she rather

presents her perception of the relationship she had with a particular individual. In the

remaining 3 instances, I don’t believe occurs within the phrase “I don’t believe so”,

which does not provide us with ample contextual evidence, on the basis of which we

would determine the tentative or deliberative use of I don’t believe. However, if we

take into consideration the questions to which the witness replied “I don’t believe so”,

i.e. “Did you see the defendant on June 13 th?”, “Do you recall having a head injury?”

and “Did you ever see any type of identification that she had?”, we notice that the use

of I don’t believe is again rather tentative, showing slightly less certainty than a mere

“No”.

There is one occurrence of I’m guessing in direct examination. Upon being shown a

phone number and asked whether she recognizes to whom it belongs, the witness

replies “I’m guessing it’s Casey’s”. Being aware of the high degree of uncertainty

displayed in her answer, she provides the reason for her uncertainty, stating that her

phone has been reprogrammed. I mean occurs only once, in direct examination, in
 Kokkaliari 58

“Very little, oh, I mean, little”. Here, I mean signals a self-repair, necessitated by the

witness’s realization that the information she provided was not precise. Interestingly,

in this case, in the reformulation of her statement, the witness drops the powerless

feature, i.e. the intensifier very.

There are 4 occurrences of you know, all found in direct examination. All four

occurrences of you know appear to signal linguistic imprecision in Holmes’s (1986)

terms. For instance, in “Only if told, you know, asked again where Caylee was”, you

know signals the speaker’s self-repair, necessitated by the speaker’s awareness that a

more precise verb than “told” is required. Similarly, in “there was an (0.1) you know,

just various issues with the house”, you know, in combination with the short pause

preceding it, signals the speaker’s search for the most precise continuation of her

utterance.

Kind of occurs 5 times in this witness’s testimony, only in direct examination. In “I

don’t know a hundred percent, I kind of think that there was one time when she was

going to go to see one of the places with us”, kind of clearly signals the speaker’s

uncertainty, which is further corroborated by “I don’t know a hundred percent”. In

this case, kind of makes the already tentative I think appear even weaker. An example

of kind of functioning as an attenuating device, in view of a potential face threatening

act is “She kind of looked like she was 16 and gotten caught, doing something bad”.

Here, the witness uses kind of to attenuate a rather derogatory comment about the

defendant’s attitude. In the following example, the hedge kind of is combined with the

intensifier really, creating an oxymoron: “I was a little scared, and really kind of tried

to close myself off”. A possible interpretation could be that kind of functions as a

filler in this case, signaling the witness’s search for the following word.
 Kokkaliari 59

Well appears 3 times in the witness’s testimony, in direct examination. The witness

uses well to introduce a self-repair as in “Yeah, well, not email” and “Well, I’ll-I’ll

take that back”, while in “Yes. Well, there were many dates set, that didn’t happen”,

well indicates that additional clarifying information will follow. Thus, this witness

uses well to introduce her disagreement with what she herself has said before.

There are 6 occurrences of probably, in direct examination, which are used to display

the witness’s lack of certainty. Maybe occurs twice, in direct examination. Both

instances of maybe denote uncertainty, which in one of the instances is further

highlighted by the use of question-like rising intonation: “Maybe late June?”. There

are 3 occurrences of about, collocating with temporal expressions denoting duration,

as in “About 3 weeks” or referring to a point in time as in “I think it was about a week

before”, all found in direct examination. Finally, again in direct examination, there are

4 occurrences of around, which again collocate with temporal expressions referring to

a specific point in time, as in “Around mid May”, “Probably around a week to 5 days

beforehand” and “Yes, it did, in around February of that year”, or with time

expressions denoting frequency as in “I’d say around once a weekend”.

Intensifiers: There are 28 total instances of intensifiers in this witness’s testimony, out

of which 25 occur in direct examination. There are 12 occurrences of really used as an

intensifier, 11 of which are found in direct examination, such as “I was really

excited”, “there was a really bad smell”, “really early in the morning” etc. At one

point where she talks about how much a friend of hers wanted to buy a specific

phone, she emphatically repeats the intensifier really 3 times: “and JP really-really-

really wanted it”. The intensifier very occurs 8 times in total, 6 times in direct and

twice in cross examination. In 3 different occasions, in direct examination, the witness

repeats very, to further enhance the intensifying effect: “very-very close friends”,
 Kokkaliari 60

“very-very-very scared” and “with a very-very big amount of persuasion”. Extremely

occurs 4 times, in direct examination. There are 2 occurrences of definitely, 1

occurrence of absolutely, and 1 occurrence of obviously in direct examination, while

there is also 1 instance of absolutely in cross examination.

Politeness markers: There are 10 occurrences of negative politeness markers in the

witness’s speech, 7 of which are found in direct examination. There is one occurrence

of I apologize, in direct examination. There are 2 instances of excuse me, which are

both incorporated within requests for repetition. Finally, there are 7 instances of I’m

sorry/sorry, 4 of which occur in direct examination. In the 3 instances of sorry or I’m

sorry in cross examination, the witness either apologizes because she previously

answered with a nod instead of a verbal answer, or because she began answering a

question to which an objection was sustained. At a one point in direct testimony, the

witness realizes that she has provided an inaccurate answer, and after a three-second

pause, she apologizes and changes her answer: “No. (3.0) Oh, yeah, no, I’m sorry, I’m

sorry. I take that back. I apologize”.

Sir: There are only 2 occurrences of sir, both found in cross examination, within the

expression “yes sir”.

In total, Amy Huizenga’s testimony exhibits 84 powerless features, out of which 71

appear in direct examination, and 13 appear in cross examination. The ratio between

the total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features is 3143/84, or

1/37 for the whole testimony, 2680/71, or 1/37 for direct examination, and 463/13, or

1/35 for cross examination. This corresponds to 26.7 instances per 1000 words in

total, 26.5 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 28 words per 1000

words for cross examination. Thus, powerless features are slightly more frequent in
 Kokkaliari 61

cross examination than direct examination, which is consistent with the assumption

that witnesses find themselves in a more powerless situation while they undergo cross

examination.

Expert Witnesses

1. Dr. John J. Schultz

Dr. Schultz is a forensic anthropologist, who examined the remains of the deceased

child. He was called to testify by the state. He was direct examined by state counsel

Jeff Ashton, and cross-examined by defense counsel Cheney Mason. The part of the

testimony examined in this study contains 125 replies, out of which 90 were given in

direct examination and 35 were given in cross examination. The witness’s answers

totaled 3230 words in direct examination, and 502 words in cross examination. Thus,

the witness’s average turn size is 35.9 words in direct and 14.3 words in cross

examination. The witness’s large turn size in direct examination is indicative of his

long narratives. His longest turn was 258-word long, which happens to contain no

powerless features whatsoever.

Hedges: There are 14 instances of I think, 12 occurring in direct and 2 occurring in

cross examination. At one point, during cross examination, there was some confusion

with regard to ante-mortem and peri-mortem trauma, and the witness produced the

following utterance: “Are you asking did we find-you asked me, I think you asked me

two separate questions”. Here, the witness, after two false starts, opts for the use of

the hedge I think, to mitigate the force of the potential face threatening act of stating

that the counsel has made a terminological error. With the exception of this instance,

all of the other instances of I think denote lack of absolute certainty, which is

sometimes corroborated by the co-occurrence of other hedges as in “I would think 25

 Kokkaliari 62

to 30 feet maybe”, or by the utterance-medial, as opposed to utterance-initial position

of I think, as in “the sheriff had set up I think a secondary area”. There are 3

occurrences of I assume, one of which is found in cross examination. In direct

examination, there is one occurrence of I guess, which forms part of a false start, and

is repaired by the speaker, and one occurrence of guess as a noun within the phrase

my guess is, in “My guess is there may have been pictures taken at this point”. In

direct examination, there is one occurrence of I mean, which, in this case, signals the

witness’s awareness that more information is required, in “Yeah, I told them to go to a

smaller size screen. I mean, they, I think they had two sizes”.

There is 1 instance of you know, in direct examination, in “I was assisting, you know,

I was not in charge”. In Holmes’s (1986) terms, this instance of you know signals the

speaker’s uncertainty in the form of linguistic imprecision, and more specifically, the

speaker’s awareness of the need for more precise or clarifying information.

There are 6 occurrences of well, out of which 3 appear in direct examination and 3

appear in cross examination. In one instance of well occurring in cross examination,

i.e. “I did not-well, I would look for the peri-mortem trauma and we did not find the

peri-mortem trauma”, well seems to introduce a “change of syntactic direction”

(Holmes, 1986: 11), preceded by a false-start. Similarly, in “No bag-well, excuse me.

(1.0) No bags, I could not tell you bag-parts of the bags, that I could not tell you”,

again occurring in cross examination, well in combination with ‘excuse me’ appears

to signal a false start, which is disrupted by “well, excuse me”, but is, then, repeated

again. In the third instance of well occurring in cross examination, well is in a turn-

initial position, signaling a different formulation than the one produced by the cross-

examining counsel with regard to the meaning of “in bags originally”: “Well, I would

assume, when I say in bags originally when deposited out of the site”. A similar
 Kokkaliari 63

instance of well signaling “something less than an agreement”, as Sacks (1987: 59)

puts it, is “Well, I provided an advisory role to the sheriff’s department, but I would

not call it an excavation”. Here, well prefaces a delayed dispreferred disagreement.

However, in the other 2 instances of well occurring in direct examination, well,

despite its turn-initial position, does not introduce a disagreement.

Probably occurs 4 times, in direct examination, although only once does it appear in a

complete sentence; in all other instances, the witness leaves his utterance incomplete

and self-repairs. For example, in “I think maybe even some of the non-human stuff

was probably-because I wasn’t there the entire time”, he uses 3 different hedges, i.e. I

think, maybe, and probably, before he finally quits his utterance, providing a

justification for the uncertainty demonstrated by the co-occurrence of so many

hedges: “because I wasn’t there the entire time”. Maybe occurs 2 times in direct

examination, and may occurs 3 times, again in direct examination.

Intensifiers: There are only 3 occurrences of intensifiers in this witness’s testimony,

all found in direct examination, i.e. 2 instances of very and 1 instance of definitely.

Politeness markers: There are 18 total occurrences of politeness markers, out of which

15 are found in direct examination, and 3 in cross examination. There are 4 instances

of sorry/I’m sorry, occurring in direct examination. The witness is repeatedly asked to

slow down, so that the court reporter can take his words down. Every time he is

interrupted by the counsels or the judge and asked to repeat his utterance more slowly,

the witness exhibits some instances of negative politeness markers, within the frame

of expressing his apologies for speaking too fast. Thus, in 2 separate instances of

sorry, the witness apologizes for talking too fast. There are 3 occurrences of please,

i.e. 2 in direct examination, and 1 in cross examination, all of which appear within
 Kokkaliari 64

requests for repetition: “Can you please repeat the question?”, “Say that again please”

and “Can you repeat that please?”. Thank you appears 4 times in total, only in direct

examination. One of the instances of thank you occurs at a point when the witness is

asked to repeat his utterance more slowly. Finally, there are 7 total occurrences of

excuse me, 5 of which appear in direct examination. Two of the occurrences of excuse

me, in direct examination, function as requests for repetition, while all the remaining

occurrences of excuse me either precede or follow a self-repair, as in “Yes and the

total station-excuse me, 3D scanner was brought in”.

Sir: The deference marker sir occurs only once, in cross examination.

In total, Dr. Schultz’s testimony exhibits 58 powerless features, out of which 48

appear in direct examination, and 10 appear in cross examination. The ratio between

the total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be

3732/58, or 1/64 for the whole testimony, 3230/48, or 1/67 for direct examination,

and 502/10, or 1/50 for cross examination. This corresponds to 15.5 instances per

1000 words in total, 14.8 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 20

words per 1000 words for cross examination. Thus, in this witness’s testimony,

powerless features are slightly more frequent in cross examination than direct

examination, which is consistent with the assumption that a witness is in a more

powerless position, when he undergoes hostile cross examination, rather than friendly

direct examination.

2. Dr. Timothy Huntington

Dr. Huntington is a forensic entomology consultant, and he was called to testify by

the defense. He was direct examined by defense counsel Jose Baez, and cross-

examined by state counsel Jeff Ashton. The part of the testimony examined in this
 Kokkaliari 65

study contains a total of 172 replies, out of which 55 were given in direct examination

and 117 were given in cross examination. Dr. Huntington’s answers contained 2638

words in direct examination, and 1936 words in cross examination. Thus, the average

turn size of this witness was 47.9 words in direct examination, and 16.5 words in

cross examination. The extremely large size of the average turn of this witness in

direct examination is indicative of the lecture-like, long narratives that he produced

during direct examination.

Hedges: Dr. Huntington’s testimony exhibits 7 occurrences of I think and 2

occurrences of I don’t think. I think occurs 2 times in direct examination and 5 times

in cross examination, while both occurrences of I don’t think are found in cross

examination. One of the two instances of I think in direct examination, in “Sure. I

think it would” as a reply to the counsel’s asking him whether it would help him if he

drew the process he was describing at the time, seems to denote certainty, rather than

uncertainty. This is also the case with 3 instances of I think occurring in cross

examination: “I think the smell of any kind of decomposition is very recognizable,

yes”, “I think that is a fair assumption” and “I think that’s a fair assumption, yes”. In

all 3 cases above, I think denotes certainty and is thus deliberative, rather than

tentative, in Holmes’s (1986) terms. One instance of I think in cross examination

constitutes a false start and is self-repaired: “Yes, I think-well, yes, if it were allowed

to decompose in the absence of those early colonizers, then yes.” Thus, there only 2

instances of I think, 1 in direct and 1 in cross examination, which are used in a

tentative, non-assertive manner, i.e. “There were a few samples, I think there were

three, of puparial cases of those early colonizing blow flies” and “anywhere between

three and I think twenty four stages”, respectively. Both instances seem to express the

speaker’s uncertainty as to whether the number he mentions is the exact one. The 2
 Kokkaliari 66

instances of I don’t think, both occurring in cross examination, i.e. “I don’t think I

have the specific data available” and “It was a case-study of a homicide, I don’t think

they wanted to replicate it” do not appear to convey any message-oriented uncertainty

on the part of the speaker: the former may be seen as an instance of “illegitimate”

non-assertiveness, while the latter is an instance of I don’t think used in a deliberative

manner, to express certainty. I believe occurs 5 times in total, 4 times in direct

examination and once in cross examination. All 5 instances of I believe express the

speaker’s message-oriented uncertainty, which is, in some cases, corroborated by the

utterance-medial position of I believe as in “I received a phone call from Linda

Kenney Baden on I believe it’s December 11th of 2008” or by the co-occurrence of

hedges such as ‘around’ in “For the law enforcement side, I believe it’s around 65

times”. There is also one occurrence of I guess, in direct examination in “those have

mostly been in Nebraska, as well as Colorado and Florida, testifying through-through

deposition I guess”. Here, the use of I guess in an utterance-final position suggests

that the witness cannot vouch for the truthfulness of the proposition he expresses.

There are 4 total occurrences of well. It occurs twice in direct examination and twice

in cross examination. Both instances of well in direct examination are at an utterance-

initial position, although they do not preface any form of disagreement or dispreferred

answer; in both instances, well simply appears to function as a turn initiator. In the 2

instances of well in cross examination, i.e. in “In terms of decomposition, well, in

terms of anything” and in “Yes, I think-well, yes, if it were allowed to decompose in

the absence of those early colonizers, then yes”, well introduces a self-repair,

necessitated by the witness’s realization that more precise or accurate information is

required.
 Kokkaliari 67

You know occurs twice, in direct examination in “Or if you ever let hamburger sit out

(.) you know when you’re-when you’re grilling or something like that” and “so by

crawling away from a food source, say, (.) you know, in this case, a decomposing

body”. In both cases, you know seems to signal lexical imprecision, which is also

indicated by the short pause directly preceding it, but at the same time, it may also

signal the speaker’s certainty that the audience understands or has experience or

knowledge of the information preceded by you know (Holmes, 1986).

There are 2 instances of probably, 1 in direct and 1 in cross examination, i.e. “The

vast majority of the entomologists that you probably see at universities, especially in

agricultural states like Nebraska, Iowa, Florida” and “Probably around 2 to 3 or

maybe 4 days” respectively. In the instance of probably occurring in direct

examination, probably signals a high degree of certainty, or probability. However, in

the cross examination occurrence, probably conveys the speaker’s uncertainty as to

the exact number of days, which is further corroborated by the co-occurrence of the

hedges ‘around’ and ‘maybe’, as well as the use of three different candidate numbers

of days. This instance of probably coincides with the sole instance of maybe, which

again expresses the witness’s uncertainty as to the truthfulness of the proposition.

There is also 1 occurrence of possibly, in cross examination, in “I would refer to those

as the fresh stage or and the bloat stage and possibly even the beginning of active

decay”, which indicates that the witness cannot vouch for the truthfulness of his

proposition; this seeming uncertainty appears to be contradictory with the witness’s

expert status, since at this particular point he is providing information pertaining to his

area of expertise. There is 1 instance of kind of, in cross examination, in “because

again, it’s kind of arbitrary”. Here, kind of does not necessarily convey the witness’s

non-assertiveness or lack of commitment to the truth of the utterance, but it rather

 Kokkaliari 68

mitigates the arbitrariness of the referent. Finally, there is 1 instance of

approximately, which occurs in direct examination, and 2 instances of around, i.e. one

in direct and one in cross examination. All instances of approximately and around

collocate with numbers, as in “approximately 8 times”, “around 65 times”, “around 2

to 3”, thus denoting the witness’s uncertainty as to the exact number.

Intensifiers: There are 21 intensifiers in Dr. Huntington’s testimony. There are 11

occurrences of very, out of which 5 are found in direct examination and 6 are found in

cross examination. There are 8 occurrences of certainly, 5 of which are found in direct

examination, denoting the speaker’s certainty and commitment to the truthfulness of

his utterance. Among the 3 occurrences of certainly found in cross examination is

“they can almost certainly penetrate those external wrappings and get to the body”,

where certainly is preceded by ‘almost’, thus denoting certainty, but to a lesser

degree. Absolutely occurs once, in direct examination. Finally, there is one instance of

incredibly as an intensifier, in direct examination, in “Entomology, the study of

insects, is an incredibly diverse field”.

Politeness markers: There are 3 instances of I apologize, 1 in direct examination and 2

in cross examination. There are 2 instances of I’m sorry, in cross examination, one of

which signals a self-repair: “The fresh stage, the bloat stage, the early decay stage-I’m

sorry, yes the early decay or active decay”. Excuse me occurs twice, in direct

examination. One of the instances of excuse me follows a self-repair, in “those body

fluids-the decompositional fluids, excuse me”, while in the other instance of excuse

me, the witness apologizes for coughing. There are also 2 instances of could, used as a

negative politeness marker, incorporated into requests for clarification, in “Could you

be more specific or-or?”, which occurs in direct examination, and “Could you
 Kokkaliari 69

rephrase that?”, which occurs in cross examination. Finally, thank you appears twice,

in cross examination.

Sir/ma’am: There is one occurrence of ma’am, which is directed to the court reporter,

who asks the witness to repeat his utterance. There are 11 total occurrences of sir

across Dr. Huntington’s testimony. Two of the occurrences of sir are found in direct

examination and the remaining nine are found in cross examination. One of the

instances of sir in cross examination, in “I’m looking sir” is addressed to the judge,

while the remaining eight occurrences of sir in cross examination are addressed to the

cross examining counsel. All of these eight instances of sir that occur in cross

examination, as well as the two instances of sir that occur in direct examination are

incorporated within the formulaic phrase yes sir/no sir.

In total, Dr. Huntington’s testimony exhibits 69 powerless features, out of which 32

appear in direct examination, and 37 appear in cross examination. The ratio between

the total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be

4574/69, or 1/66 for the whole testimony, 2638/32, or 1/82 for direct examination,

and 1936/37, or 1/52 for cross examination. This corresponds to 15 instances per 1000

words in total, 12.1 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 19.1 words

per 1000 words for cross examination. Therefore, in Dr. Huntington’s testimony, the

use of powerless features is more frequent in cross examination than direct

examination, which is consistent with the assumption that a witness is in a more

powerless position, while being examined in cross examination, as opposed to being

examined in direct examination.

3. Dr. Jan Garavaglia

 Kokkaliari 70

Dr. Garavaglia is the chief medical examiner for Orange and Osceola counties, and

since the remains of the deceased child were found in a territory belonging to her

jurisdiction, she was assigned with the task of examining the remains. This witness is

called to the stand by the state. She was examined by state counsel Jeff Ashton in

direct examination, and she was cross examined by defense counsel Cheney Mason.

The part of the testimony examined in this study contains a total of 154 replies, out of

which 83 were given in direct examination and 71 were given in cross examination.

Dr. Garavaglia’s answers contained 1726 words in direct examination, and 1132

words in cross examination. Thus, the average size of Dr. Garavaglia’s turns is 20.7

words in direct examination, and 15.9 words in cross examination. The witness’s

longest turn is 203 words long, and it exhibits no powerless features.

Hedges: There are 4 occurrences of I believe and 1 occurrence of I do not believe, all

found in direct examination. Only 1 instance of I believe is of tentative nature: “I

believe I might have even talked to Dr. Schultz myself, I can’t remember”. Here, I

believe, in combination with ‘might’ and ‘I can’t remember’, expresses the witness

uncertainty as to the truthfulness of the proposition. All other instances of I believe

and I do not believe, i.e. “I believe we can reliably say it’s a homicide”, and No, I

believe, we have enough evidence and I believe it’s scientifically defensible to say it’s

a homicide, but I do not believe we have enough scientific information to say the

means of how that homicide occurred” are of deliberative nature, in Holmes’s (1986)

terms, since they express the witness’s firm opinion.

I think occurs twice, in cross examination, in “I think that would be one of the

possibilities that we would have to examine” and “I think that is the only logical

conclusion”. Both instances of I think appear to be deliberative, expressing the

speaker’s firm opinion, and therefore, strong commitment to the truthfulness of the
 Kokkaliari 71

proposition. I don’t/didn’t think occurs 3 times, twice in direct examination and once

in cross examination, in “I didn’t think my absence for the night would-would

matter”, “No, I don’t think we saw any roots in the shorts” and “So I don’t think I was

as aware as most people”, respectively. In all 3 instances, I don’t/didn’t think

expresses the witness’s certainty, or firm belief.

During cross examination, upon expressing her opinion regarding the manner of death

being a homicide, the witness uses the verb I felt on 4 different occasions, 3 of which

appear in the same turn: “I felt that the manner of death, although the cause of death is

homicide by undetermined means, I felt the means were unable to be substantiated

scientifically, I felt the manner of death was defensible scientifically”. I felt does not

mitigate the force of the utterance, but it rather emphasizes the witness’s strong stance

towards the proposition that follows. At the same time, the triple repetition of I felt

within the same turn adds a rather personal and sentimental tone to the witness’s

narrative.

Dr. Garavaglia’s testimony exhibits 2 instances of you know, 1 in direct examination,

i.e. “because sometimes even a gunshot wound would go through, (.) you know and

not touch the bones” and 1 in cross examination, i.e. “We know-and of course, (.) you

know, observational systematic observational studies are part of science”, both of

which signal lexical imprecision (Holmes, 1986), which is also suggested by the short

pause preceding you know.

There are 5 occurrences of well in the witness’s testimony, out of which 3 appear in

direct examination and 2 appear in cross examination. All instances of well in direct

examination are in a turn-initial position, and seem to function merely as turn

initiators, carrying no particular meaning, as in “Well, we thought the best

 Kokkaliari 72

identification was going to be through DNA”. The first instance of well in cross

examination introduces a forthcoming self-repair, although the speaker finally decides

that her initial answer was accurate: “Benzodia-, well (1.0) it’s a Benzodiazepine also

known as Xanax”. In the second instance of well in cross examination, i.e. “Well, I

can’t take anything the Media would say into a decision as grave as this”, well, which

appears in a turn-initial position, prefaces a disagreement to the cross examining

counsel’s question, asking Dr. Garavaglia whether she had been influenced by the

Media.

There are 3 instances of kind of, out of which 2 occur in direct examination and 1

occurs in cross examination. All 3 instances of kind of are indicators of the speaker’s

linguistic uncertainty in terms of lexical imprecision, which is also suggested by the

presence of a short pause in direct or close proximity to kind of, as in “The canvas

laundry bag was canvas on the outside and some type of (1.0) kind of shiny vinyl type

material on the inside”. There is also 1 instance of a bit, in direct examination, in “that

was a bit difficult with this child”, which can be interpreted as either mitigating the

force of the adjective ‘difficult’ or as literally reflecting the amount of difficulty

faced.

There are 2 occurrences of might, in direct examination, in “I believe I might have

even talked to Dr. Schultz” and “I might have even taken that photograph”, both of

which demonstrate the witness’s lack of absolute certainty. Finally, there is 1

occurrence of probably in direct examination, i.e. “we are also looking at some holes-

holes in the hair mat probably from insect activity”. In this case, although the witness

is not fully committed to the truthfulness of the proposition, she suggests that there is

a high degree of probability that the proposition is true.

 Kokkaliari 73

Intensifiers: Dr. Garavaglia’s testimony exhibits 13 total instances of intensifiers.

Very occurs 5 times in total, twice in direct examination and 3 times in cross

examination. There are 2 instances of certainly, in direct examination. Absolutely

occurs 6 times, 3 times in direct examination and 3 times in cross examination. In all

3 instances in direct examination and in one of the instances in cross examination,

absolutely is the only word in the witness’s turn, as an emphatic, indisputable

affirmative answer.

Politeness markers: Dr. Garavaglia exhibits only 2 instances of politeness markers in

her testimony, both occurring within requests for clarification or repetition, i.e. sorry

in direct examination in “Sorry, the cause?” and please in cross examination, in

“Please repeat the question”. This witness’s testimony exhibits no instances of the

deference marker sir.

In total, Dr. Garavaglia’s testimony exhibits 43 powerless features, out of which 25

occur in direct examination, and 18 occur in cross examination. The ratio between the

total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be 2858/43, or

1/66 for the whole testimony, 1726/25, or 1/69 for direct examination, and 1132/18,

or 1/62 for cross examination. This corresponds to 15 instances of powerless features

per 1000 words in total, 14.4 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and

15.9 words per 1000 words for cross examination. Thus, in Dr. Garavaglia’s

testimony, powerless features are almost equally divided between direct examination

and cross examination, occurring slightly more frequently in cross examination. In

this case, the use of powerless features on the part of the witness appears to be only

partially affected by the witness’s powerless position, which is aggravated in cross

examination.
 Kokkaliari 74

4. Heather Seubert

At the time of the trial, Heather Seubert was the Unit Chief of the Firearms Tool

marks Unit at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. In 2008 she was a

supervisory forensic DNA examiner in the DNA Analysis Unit at the same FBI

laboratory. This witness was called to testify by the defense. She was examined by

defense counsel Jose Baez in direct examination, and she was cross examined by state

counsel Jeff Ashton. Her testimony contains a total of 165 replies, out of which 105

were given in direct examination and 60 were given in cross examination. Seubert’s

answers contained 3230 words in direct examination, and 1555 words in cross

examination. Thus, the average turn size of this witness is 19.5 words in direct

examination, and 25.9 words in cross examination. Therefore, contrary to what is the

norm in cross examination, where the witnesses’ amount of speech is restricted by the

type of questions asked by the cross examining counsel, Heather Seubert produced

longer narratives in cross examination. The larger turn size she exhibits in cross

examination is also consistent with the fact that her longest turn, which is 218 words

long, occurs in cross examination.

Hedges: The most frequent hedge in this testimony is well. It occurs 12 times in total,

7 times in direct examination and 5 times in cross examination. All 12 instances of

well are in an utterance-initial position. In direct examination, in all but one instance,

well seems to fulfill no apparent function, other than to open an answer-turn, pursuant

to an open-ended question as in “how was the DNA Analysis Unit broken down at the

FBI laboratory?”, “What does that mean the Scientific Working Group for DNA?”,

“Why did you do the DNA test?”, “what can you get DNA from in a person’s body?”

or “Can you describe to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury a little bit about touch

DNA?”. However, in “Well, that would depend” as an answer to the closed-ended

 Kokkaliari 75

question “And if you collected an item off of the floor, that would be Q1, Q2 and so

on?” well introduces “something less than an agreement” (Sacks, 1987: 59). Similarly,

in cross examination, upon being asked the closed-ended, yes/no question “Did your

test refute that?”, the witness replies “Well, I can’t speak to whether or not there was

blood or decomposition fluid present there, because my test is negative”. In this case,

well signals the witness’s inability or unwillingness to answer the question, as posed.

Well, as a turn-initiator within a reply to a closed-ended question, may also introduce

more precise or additional information to the information contained in the question, as

in:

Ashton: Is the heme portion only found in intact red blood cells?

Seubert: Well, it could- certainly if you had some broken down red blood

cells, if it’s still attached there, you could have some residual that could be

present, but as you start to break down the red blood cells, you are starting to

then also break down the heme portion that’s present.

I think appears twice, in cross examination, at a point when the witness expresses her

concern that she may have provided inaccurate information regarding the DNA types

of the defendant and her daughter: “I think I may have misspoke with the types that

were at D3” and “I think I referred to them both being a 14-15”. Here, I think may

denote the witness’s pure lack of certainty as to whether she provided false

information or not, or it may function as an attenuating device, which reduces the

gravity of the witness’s error.

There is only 1 occurrence of you know, in cross examination, in “I didn’t expect that

there would- you know, the expectation was neither here nor there”. In this particular
 Kokkaliari 76

case, you know indicates that it is preceded by a false start and introduces a self-

repair, marking “a change of syntactic direction” (Holmes, 1986: 11).

There is only 1 instance of kind of, in cross examination, in “I know it doesn’t-it

sounds kind of technical”, where the witness acknowledges that the specialized

terminology she uses may be hard to follow. In this case, kind of seems to fulfill 2

simultaneous functions: on the one hand, it serves as a filler, signaling the speaker’s

struggle for lexical precision, which is also indicated by the false start preceding kind

of, and on the other hand, it mitigates the force of the proposition.

There are 5 occurrences of may, 1 in direct examination and 4 in cross examination.

However, the only instance of may that can be interpreted as denoting uncertainty is

“I think I may have misspoke with the types that were at D3”, quoted above in the

analysis of I think.

Probably occurs once in direct examination, in “I did that for a number of years and

probably provided instruction to well over a thousand DNA analysts”. Here, the

witness uses probably to express increased probability, instead of absolute certainty,

and, thus, to mitigate the force of an utterance that can be interpreted as containing a

self-praise. In this respect, by mitigating a possible self-praise, the witness adheres to

the “modesty maxim”, proposed by Leech (1983: 136). There is also 1 occurrence of

it is probable, in cross examination.

It is/it’s possible occurs 5 times in total, twice in direct examination, and 3 times in

cross examination. When uttered in reply to a tag question as in “when someone

grabs-touches an item, DNA is left, correct?”, it expresses a reserved agreement.

 Kokkaliari 77

Intensifiers: There are only 6 instances of intensifiers in this witness’s testimony, 5 of

which appear in direct testimony. There are 3 occurrences of very and 2 occurrences

of extremely in direct examination, and there is 1 occurrence of certainly in cross

examination.

Politeness markers: There are 8 total instances of politeness markers. There are 2

instances of I’m sorry, 1 in direct and 1 in cross examination. In the direct

examination occurrence, the witness apologizes for providing more precise

information than required, because on being asked where and how many times she has

testified as an expert witness, she enumerated the different cities where she has

provided expert testimony, instead of stating “all across the country” as the counsel

later suggested. In the cross examination occurrence, I’m sorry is incorporated within

a request for repetition, which also contains the politeness marker could: “Could you-

[I’m sorry] I’ll make you-could you repeat it one more time?”. There are 2

occurrences of I apologize, 1 in direct and 1 in cross examination. Finally, on three

different occasions, the witness requests the court’s or the examining counsel’s

permission to perform an act which she considers to be slightly deviant from the norm

that governs courtroom discourse. In the first occasion, in direct examination, she

requests permission from the court to consult her notes: “at this time if-if it would be

acceptable that I may refer to my-the notes that I brought with me today that I used in

conducting my analysis?”. In the second occasion, in cross examination, upon

realizing that she has previously provided inaccurate information, she interrupts the

process of examination to request permission from the court to proceed to a

rectification: “so I just want to make sure that the jury was clear on the types that

were present, if that would be appropriate”. In the third occasion, in cross

examination, the witness asks for the cross examining counsel’s permission to answer
 Kokkaliari 78

a closed-ended question as if it was open-ended: “If I may answer, [without] yes or a

no?”

Sir: There are 16 total instances of sir in this witness’s testimony, out of which 12

appear in direct examination, and 4 appear in cross examination. All 4 instances of sir

in cross examination and 9 instances of sir in direct examination occur within the yes

sir/no sir phrase.

Thus, Heather Seubert’s testimony exhibits 55 powerless features, out of which 29

appear in direct examination, and 24 appear in cross examination. The ratio between

the total number of words and the occurrences of powerless features would be

4785/55, or 1/87 for the whole testimony, 3230/29, or 1/111 for direct examination,

and 1555/24, or 1/64 for cross examination. This corresponds to 11.5 instances per

1000 words in total, 8.9 instances per 1000 words for direct examination, and 15.4

words per 1000 words for cross examination. Thus, in this witness’s testimony,

powerless features are almost twice more frequent in cross examination than direct

examination, which is consistent with the assumption that witnesses are in a more

powerless position, when undergoing cross examination, rather than friendly direct

examination.

Aggregate Results

From a purely quantitative perspective, our data corroborate O’Barr and Atkins’

(1980) findings with regard to expert witnesses using fewer powerless features

compared to lay witnesses, irrespective of their gender, as is demonstrated in the table

and graph below.

 Kokkaliari 79

Witness George Lee Cindy Amy Schultz Huntington Garavaglia Seubert

Powerless 38.2 42.2 23.7 26.7 15.5 15 15 11.5

Features

per 1000

words

Number of powerless features per 1000 words in the whole testimony of each witness

45
40
George A.
35
Lee A.
30
Cindy A.
25
Amy H.
20
J. Schultz
15
T. Huntington
10
J. Garavaglia
5
H. Seubert
0
Powerless Features

Interestingly, though, the testimonies of the two male lay witnesses exhibit more

instances of powerless features, compared to the testimonies of the two female lay

witnesses. Similarly, the testimonies of the two male expert witnesses exhibit the

same frequency of powerless features as the testimony of one of the female experts,

Dr. Jan Garavaglia, but slightly higher frequency of powerless features, compared to

the testimony of the other female expert witness, Heather Seubert. Thus, our results

refute Lakoff’s suggestion that the features comprising “women’s language” or

powerless speech are preponderantly used by women. Our results also contradict

O’Barr and Atkins’s (1980) findings that among speakers of similar status, women

tended to use more powerless features than men.

 Kokkaliari 80

The results further demonstrate that there is some intra-speaker variation with regard

to the use of powerless features under friendly examination and under hostile

examination, especially in George and Cindy Anthony’s testimonies, as is shown in

the tables and graphs below.

Lay Witnesses George A. Lee A. Cindy A. Amy H.

Friendly 24.9 40.1 18.8 26.5

Examination

Hostile 44 49.7 31.1 28

Examination

Number of powerless features per 1000 words for lay witnesses, in friendly and hostile examination.

60

50

40 George A.

30 Lee A.
Cindy A.
20
Amy H.
10

0
Friendly Examination Hostile Examination

John S. Tim H. Jan G. Heather S.

Friendly 14.8 12.1 14.4 8.9

Examination

Hostile 20 19.1 15.9 15.4

Examination

Number of powerless features per 1000 words for expert witnesses, in friendly and hostile examination.
 Kokkaliari 81

25

20

J. Schultz
15
T. Huntington
10 J. Garavaglia
H. Seubert
5

0
Friendly Examination Hostile Examination

This variation, which is not taken into consideration in O’Barr and Atkins’s (1980)

study, indicates that witnesses are often in a more powerless position, while they are

being examined in hostile examination, and they, thus, exhibit more instances of

powerless features.

Nevertheless, the extensive qualitative analysis of each witness’s testimony in terms

of powerless features has shown that the vast majority of powerless features exhibited

in these eight witnesses’ testimonies are not necessarily associated with tentativeness,

non-assertiveness or powerlessness. For example, throughout the eight testimonies

there are many instances of hedges used “legitimately”, as Lakoff would put it, to

express the speaker’s pure uncertainty as to the content of the proposition, which is

further indicated by the co-occurrence of other hedges or expressions which explicitly

state the speaker’s uncertainty, such as “I don’t remember”, “I’m not sure”, “I don’t

know” etc. Moreover, there are numerous instances of hedges performing the second

legitimate function of hedges, according to Lakoff (1975), i.e. to mitigate the force of

face threatening acts for the purpose of politeness. Throughout the eight testimonies,
 Kokkaliari 82

hedges are also frequently used as fillers, signaling the speaker’s lexical imprecision,

or for the purpose of introducing qualifying information, or indicating a false start, as

is suggested by Holmes (1986). Hedges such as well are also used in a rather powerful

manner, to initiate disagreements, while verbs such as I believe and I think, which are

regarded as hedges, are repeatedly used in a deliberative manner, to express firm

beliefs. The data, especially from George Anthony’s testimony in hostile direct

examination, also show that powerless features such as the deference marker sir can

be manipulated by witnesses for the purpose of gaining interactional power to balance

the asymmetrical power relation deriving from their lack of situational power. Other

forms of politeness, such as I’m sorry, I apologize and excuse me are often used by

the witnesses, when they somehow deviate from the standard norms of courtroom

discourse, e.g. when they interpose a comment or a question, or when they introduce

changes to the information they have already provided. Finally, intensifiers are not

necessarily used over-emphatically, out of the speakers’ insecurity that they may not

be listened to or taken seriously unless they “speak in italics” as Lakoff (1975) puts it.

Intensifiers, especially when followed by scalar adjectives, may be used to represent

the truth more precisely. For example, ‘very small bones’, referring to the bones of

the three-year old child, better depicts the size of the bones than ‘small’, and ‘very

angry’ may better correspond to the inner state of the individual referred to than just

‘angry’.

Further Research

The current study suggests that, at least within the frame of courtroom discourse,

women’s speech does not differ from men’s speech in terms of frequency of

powerless features, which may optimistically indicate that the social differences
 Kokkaliari 83

between men and women have now significantly diminished. However, this study is

based on a relatively small corpus, which contains testimonies from only eight

individuals. It would be interesting to see whether the same results would be

replicated, if a substantially larger corpus of testimonies from the Casey Anthony

trial, as well as from other similar trials in the U.S.A., was to be examined. Moreover,

pursuant to this study, the following step would be to see how these features are

perceived and received by potential jurors. It would be interesting to replicate Conley

et al.’s (1978) experiment, to see whether speakers who do not exhibit powerless

features in their speech are still perceived as more competent, intelligent and credible

than witnesses who exhibit powerless features. In the light of the multifunctionality or

legitimate use of the powerless features, especially hedges, occurring in the

testimonies of these eight witnesses, what remains to be examined is whether these

features are so entrenched in the minds of people as being associated with individuals

of lower social status or female speakers that no matter how powerfully or

legitimately they are used, they will still be regarded as powerless.

 Kokkaliari 84

References

Biscetti, Stefania. (2006). In Gotti, M. & Flowerdew, J. (eds.), Studies in Specialized

Discourse. Bern: Peter Lang. 209-238.

Coates, Jennifer. (1996). Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends.

Oxford: Blackwell.

Coates, Jennifer (ed.). (2004). Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cotterill, Janet. (2003). Language and Power in Court: A Linguistic Analysis of the O.

J. Simpson Trial. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Coulthard, Malcolm & Johnson, Alison. (2007). An Introduction to Forensic

Linguistics: Language in Evidence. London/New York: Routledge.

Eades, Diana. (2010). Sociolinguistics and the Legal Process. Bristol: Multilingual

Matters Textbooks.

Eckert, Penelope & McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (2003). Language and Gender.

Cambride: Cambridge University Press.

Gibbons, John. (2008). Questioning in common law criminal courts. In John Gibbons

& Maria Teresa Turell (eds.) Dimensions of Forensic Linguistics.

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 115-130.

Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In Steven Davis, (ed.), Pragmatics. A

Reader, Oxford University Press, New York.

Holmes, Janet. (1986). Functions of you know in women’s and men’s speech.

Language in Society, 15, 1-21.

 Kokkaliari 85

Holt Elizabeth and Johnson, Alison. (2010). Legal Talk: Socio-pragmatic aspects of

legal talk: police interviews and trial discourse. In Malcom Coulthard &

Alison Johnson (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. New

York: Routledge. 21-36.

Lakoff, Robin. (1975). Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row.

Leech, Geoffrey. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (2004). Positioning Ideas and Gendered Subjects: “Women’s

Language” Revisited. In Mary Bucholtz (ed.) Language and Woman’s Place:

Text and Commentaries, revised and expanded edition. New York: Oxford

University Press. 136-142.

O’Barr, William M. and Atkins, Bowman K. (1980). “Women’s language” or

“powerless language”? In Coates, Jennifer (ed.) Language and Gender: A

Reader. 2004. Oxford: Blackwell. 377-387.

O’Barr, William. (1993). “Professional Varieties: The Case of Language and the

Law”. In Preston, Dennis (ed.): American Dialect Research. Philadelphia:

John Benjamins. 319-330.

Rock, Frances. (2011). Variation and Forensic Linguistics. In Maguire, W. &

McMahon, A (eds.): Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
 Kokkaliari 86

Sacks, H. (1987). On the Preference for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in

Conversation. In G. Button & J. R. Lee (eds.): Talk and Social Organization.

Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Shuy, Roger. (2003). To Testify or not to testify? In J. Cotterill (ed.) Language in the

Legal Process. London: Palgrave. 3-18.

Talbot, Mary. (2001). Language and Gender: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

Taylor, Charlotte. (2006). Powerless Language? Witness strategies in the Hutton

Inquiry. In Gotti, M. & Flowerdew, J. (eds.), Studies in Specialized Discourse.

Bern: Peter Lang. 263-287.

URLs to the videos of the trial

George Anthony:
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-42-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcdN/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-42-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcdQ/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-42-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcdX/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-42-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcdY/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-42-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcdb/
Lee Anthony:

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDN/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDS/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDQ/
 Kokkaliari 87

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDR/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcWG/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcWJ/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcWL/
Cindy Anthony:

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcT6/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcT7/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcT9/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-38-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcWG/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-37-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcTk/

Amy Huizenga:
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-17-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDB/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-17-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDF/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-17-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDH/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDM/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-18-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZDN/

John Schultz:
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-26-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZS3/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-26-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZS5/

Timothy Huntington:
 Kokkaliari 88

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-32-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcLS/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-32-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcLX/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-32-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcL3/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-32-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcL4/
Jan Garavaglia:

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-26-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZTB/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-26-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZTF/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-26-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCZTH/

Heather Seubert:

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKh/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKj/
http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKk/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKs/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKt/

http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-video-day-31-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial-
pt/vCcKw/