NCJ Number
104197
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 3 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1986) Pages: 409-427
Date Published
1986
Length
19 pages
Annotation
The process of turning spoken/acted legal proceedings into written records necessarily involves the loss of some of the contextual clues to meaning that were available for the participants involved.
Abstract
That problem has not escaped attention by the courts, but in general it has been treated as a de minimus issue relevant only to demeanor evidence, which higher courts are traditionally reluctant to review. This paper suggests that such an assumption needs reexamination. Citing the literature and three empirical studies, a case is made that contextual features not only survive the transcription process (and do so variably, depending on the court reporter's theory of verbatimness), but that they are regularly relied on by judicial readers and are potentially important to the appellate process. (Publisher abstract)