How and why different viewers interpret a courtroom interaction in different ways.

What is it about?

This paper is a contribution to a special issue of a journal in which different analytical frameworks are applied to the same piece of data - an interaction between a judge and a defendant in a courtroom - in order to draw out how different approaches to politeness phenomena bring to light different issues about social interaction. Here my point is to show that just one word - the word 'adios' - as it is used by the defendant has been interpreted in different ways by different viewers of the Youtube clip of the courtroom interaction. In my analysis I develop and apply a theoretical framework that synthesises insights from the fields of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. I merge a relevance theoretical account of how inferences inform interpretations of talk with a sociolinguistic account of how patterned associations between linguistic resources and aspects of social identity lead to the indexing of social meaning. I draw out patterns in the interpretations of different viewers, showing how these are based on the pre-existing perceptions of gender and legal institutions that viewers draw on when making sense of the courtroom talk.

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Why is it important?

This work is significant in that it addresses a problem that any analysis of social interaction faces: how to identify and talk about the origin and nature of the social meanings that language users attach to linguistic resources. I show how an approach to linguistic politeness that brings together developments in the pragmatic understanding of communication, with developments in the sociolinguistic understanding of patterns of behaviour, can show how individuals and groups assign social meaning to the use of linguistic resources in context.

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