Identity, Equity, and Communication in the Criminal Process: Investigating Language and Power in the Contemporary Scottish Courtroom

“我们试图阐明语言在法律经常未能兑现其平等待遇的基本承诺中所起的作用。反复出现的一个问题是语言在法律的权力的产生、行使和颠覆中的中心地位。（Conley and O 'Barr，1993）Conley and O' Barr（1993）描述了法庭经验的公理，即参与者离开时有一种不公平的“感觉”，一种“感觉”，即“法律的力量对一些人来说比对其他人更容易获得”（第3页）。这不仅说明机构承认法院的经验可能造成伤害（Bottoms和Roberts，2010年），而且还强调了Conley和O 'Barr的观察仍然是相关的。为了理解这种现象，他们将语言确定为最重要的研究竞技场。然而，令人惊讶的是，犯罪学对权力的生产、再生产和潜在挑战的主要载体缺乏关注。通过关注法庭上所有参与者所使用的、但来自不同权力位置的工具，我们可以深入了解法庭上持续存在的不公平感究竟来自何处，以及我们如何减少这种不公平感。大量的学术著作描绘了英国的刑事司法系统。和苏格兰作为“窃取冲突”从被告（例如克里斯蒂，1977年）。这位博士认为，一个更有心理意识和现代的概念化这个问题的方法是“偷故事”。“以我们自己的方式讲述关于我们自己的故事不仅具有重要的心理价值，正如关于叙事身份的大量研究所显示的那样（例如史蒂文斯，2012），而且在犯罪学领域也引起了越来越多的兴趣（例如桑德伯格和乌格尔维克，2016）。因此，这个项目将探讨故事是如何在苏格兰法庭上被语言学窃取的--或者确实是被启用还是被拥护--以便为它的挑战提供一个竞技场。1.在刑事法庭上，故事是如何被建构、重构和解构的？A.在法庭诉讼期间，专业人员如何处理参与者提出的叙述？B。从语言上讲，这是否构成了“偷故事”？C.语境中语言的实证方法，如会话分析和批评性话语分析，是否有助于探索微观话语，并提供关于法庭叙事发生了什么的见解？2.在刑事法庭上，语言是如何编码权力的？A.在叙述中使用了什么样的语言权力游戏策略，它们对法庭上更广泛的权力动态有什么影响？B。证人（审判）、被害人（审判）和被告（减刑）的叙述有哪些相似之处和不同之处？3.“偷故事”现象在理论和实践上有什么启示？A.对刑事司法程序造成的“二次伤害”理论有何影响？B。潜在的语言过程如何有助于社会身份（即种族，性别，阶级等）的文献。在刑事法庭程序中的权力D.在实践中可以做些什么来打击不平等，回报故事，减少苏格兰法院的伤害？在犯罪过程中的社会劣势的研究往往集中在个别群体的经验，突出差异;我的项目可能会开发一个理论的语言下的相似性，从而统一不同的犯罪学研究机构。更实际地说，这项研究将揭示语言是表达和再现社会不平等的场所;因此，它也是可能受到挑战的场所。这可以用于许多提高认识的应用程序，首先是为CJS从业人员，政策领导人和支持社区服务的第三部门服务

'We tried to illuminate the role that language plays in the law's frequent failure to deliver on its basic promise of equal treatment. The single issue that emerged over and over was the centrality of language in the production, exercise, and subversion of legal power.' (Conley and O'Barr, 1993)Conley and O'Barr (1993) described as axiom of the court experience that participants leave with a 'sense' of unfairness, a 'feeling' that 'the power of the law is more accessible to some than to others' (p.3) In 2004, Scotland saw the passage of the Vulnerable Witnesses Act which allows procedural adjustments for certain disadvantaged groups. This not only illustrates institutional acknowledgment of the potential for harm as a result of court experiences (Bottoms and Roberts, 2010) but also highlights that Conley and O'Barr's observation continues to be relevant. They identified language as the single most important arena of study in order to understand this phenomenon. However, there is a surprising dearth in Criminology of focus on this main vehicle for the production, reproduction, and potential challenge of power. By paying attention to that which all players in the courtroom use but from different positions of power, we may gain insight into where exactly the persistent sense of unfairness in the courtroom comes from and how we may reduce it. A rich body of academic work casts the criminal justice system within the U.K. and Scotland as "stealing conflicts" from defendants (e.g. Christie, 1977). This PhD suggests that a more psychologically-aware and contemporary method of conceptualizing this issue is that of "stealing stories." Telling narratives about ourselves in our own way is not only of crucial psychological value, as vast research on narrative identity shows (e.g. Stevens, 2012), but also of rising interest within the field of criminology (e.g. Sandberg and Ugelvik, 2016). This project will therefore explore how stories are linguistically stolen in Scottish courts - or indeed whether enabled or championed - in order to provide an arena for its challenge. 1. How are stories constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed in the criminal courts?A. What do professionals do during court proceedings with the narratives as presented by participants? B. Linguistically, does this constitute "stealing stories" from them?C. Can empirical approaches to language-in-context, such as conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis, help explore microdiscourse and provide insights on what happens to narratives in courts?2. How does language encode power in the criminal courts?A. What strategies of linguistic power play are employed upon narratives and what is their effect on wider power dynamics in the courtroom? B. What similarities and differences exist in what happens to narratives of witnesses (trial), victims (trial), and defendants (mitigation)? 3. What implications does the phenomenon of "stealing stories" have theoretically and practically?A. What are the implications for theories of "secondary harm" caused by the criminal justice process?B. How can underlying linguistic processes contribute to literatures on social identity (i.e. race, gender, class, etc.) and power in criminal courtroom proceedings?D. What can be done in practice to combat inequity, return stories, and reduce harm in Scottish courts?Studies of social disadvantage in the criminal process tend to focus on the experiences of individual groups, highlighting difference; my project may develop a theory of similarity under language and thus unify diverse bodies of criminological research. More practically, this research would reveal language as a site where social inequity is expressed and reproduced; it would thus also be the site where it could be challenged. This could be used for a number of awareness-building applications, to start with - for CJS practitioners, policy leaders, and third-sector services supporting witnes