Refashioning confession: The recontextualisation of digital confession evidence in court

If a confession is recorded, it is more likely to be admitted to court as evidence (Solan and Tiersma 2005). Research on confessions is plentiful (e.g. Kassin 2008), but there are very few studies into how lawyers use confessions when cases go to court. Yet how lawyers reformulate confessions might affect jurors' interpretations, so this project investigates how lawyers and witnesses talk about digital confession evidence in witness examination and closing arguments.
Recontextualisation refers to how historic texts are used in new contexts (Johnson 2013). Looking beyond confessions, we know that lawyers are selective; evidence is often presented partially (Barlow 2015). Further, recontextualisation forms - like reading aloud, paraphrasing, reported speech (see e.g. Heffer, Rock and Conley 2013) - have distinct functions. Quoting directly, for example, is seen as accurate (Philips 1986); it reduces the 'intertextual gap' (Bauman and Briggs 1990). Crucially, how recontextualised texts are framed, lexically and syntactically (Bauman 1986; D'hondt 2009), as well as how they are performed (Matoesian 2000), all contribute to their impact. Yet few studies give equivalent weight to selection, framing and performance.
My broad research question is:
How are confessions recontextualised at trial?
Specifically, I ask:
How - lexically, syntactically and paralinguistically - do lawyers and confession witnesses
re-, de- and co-construct the meaning, authority and significance of confessions during witness examination and closing arguments?
To answer this, I will select three trials with corresponding digital confession evidence. Audio and video recordings will be transcribed and annotated using CLAN (2022) then ELAN (2022). Texts will be transcribed exactly as written. To analyse, I will use interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982) because it appreciates the "large-scale sociological effects of small-scale interactions" (Jaquement 2014: 475), ideal for analysing the rule-bound context of forensic interaction. The trial foci are instances where confessions are spoken about, which will then be compared to the 'source' confession evidence: the digital recordings.
Academically, this study will enhance knowledge of: recontextualisation, digital evidence, confessions. Societally, innocent people are found guilty based on confessions - a decision made in court dependent on their recontextualisation. By suggesting communicative reforms, this study could improve judicial fairness.
References
Barlow, C. 2015. Silencing the other: Gendered representations of co-accused women offenders. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 54(5): 469-488.
Bauman, R. 1986. Story, performance, and event: Contextual studies of oral narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Bauman, R. and Briggs, C. L. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88.
D'hondt, S. 2014. Defending through disaffiliation: The vicissitudes of alignment and footing in Belgian criminal hearings. Language & Communication 36: 66-82.
Gumperz, J. J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Heffer, C., Rock, F. and Conley, J. Legal-lay communication: Textual travels in the law. New York: Oxford UP.
Jaquement, M. 2014. Introduction to the volume. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23: 113-114.
Kassin, S. M. 2008. False confessions: Causes, consequences, and implications for reform. Current Directions in Psychological Science 17(4): 249-253.
Matoesian, G. 2000. Intertextual authority in reported speech: Production media in the Kennedy Smith rape trial. Journal of Pragmatics 32(7): 879-914.
Philips, S. 1986. Reported speech as evidence in an American trial. In: Tannen, D. and Alatis, J. E. eds. Language and linguistics: The interdependence of theory, data, and application. Washington: Georgetown UP, 154-170.
Solan, L. M. and Tiersma, P. 2005. Speaking of crime: The language of criminal justic