DISCOURSE DYNAMICS IN THE COURTROOM Some methodological points of description

It is the aim of this paper to present an approach to, and some results from the discourse analysis of a Supreme Court Murder trial held in Victoria, Australia; and to discuss some sociological aspects that act as scenario constraints on this type of discourse; which (therefore) should enter into the discourse analysis of this type of talk. The methodological concerns dealt with include: details of the setting and how these interact with power-relations; rules of conduct; and the role of the individual as embedded within social context. The data are the court transcripts of a single Supreme Court murder trial, held over 6 days in Victoria (Australia) during 1986. The data encompass 33 witness testimonies. The method of discourse analysis embraces the theoretical perspectives of Cognitive Linguistics, which aims to consider linguistic phenomena within a context of (general) cognitive and cultural constraints. To this end, my approach includes a new treatment of the concept of topic, as well as the Given vs New information dichotomy in terms of (cognitive) Mental Spaces, in an attempt to achieve a dynamic approach to language that will capture on-line comprehension; inference generation; and the integration of information gleaned across witnesses during the trial into a congruent whole the basis from which a jury must derive its verdict.