Book Review: Just Words: Law, Language and Power
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390000900114 |
| Published date | 01 March 2000 |
| Author | Lieve Gies |
| Date | 01 March 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
JOHN M. CONLEY AND WILLIAM M. O’BARR, Just Words: Law, Language and Power,
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998, xvi + 168pp., $35.00 (cloth),
$13.00 (pbk).
In this book, the authors present a collection of mainly empirical work in the field of
law and language. Their aim is to develop an integrative perspective on the issues of
law, language and power, issues which have so far been studied disparately. The ‘law
and society’ tradition tackles these issues on a fairly abstract level, while socio-
linguistics usually focuses on the micro-level, approaching language as the symptom
of wider power structures. Both disciplines are underpinned by the idea that equal
treatment in law is an unfulfilled promise.
By bringing together a number of studies from the fields of anthropology, soci-
olinguistics and history, Conley and O’Barr want to highlight the possible connec-
tions between the micro- and macro-levels of legal discourse. They successfully
demonstrate that the law’s power is not an abstract idea, but that it is something that
can be observed in everyday life. Language constitutes an important mechanism in
realising the impact of law on social interaction. In particular, the emphasis is on how
the use of language in law is an important source of gender bias. In one of the chap-
ters, the analysis of the interaction between defence lawyers and rape victims shows
that linguistic details matter in this context. The style of cross-examining rape victims
contributes to the re-enactment of the original crime, i.e. their revictimization. A
similar observation is made about the use of mediation in divorce cases. Although
usually regarded as a woman-friendly process, the reality is that a large number of
women do not get a good divorce settlement through mediation. Again, language and
conversation are important factors. Mediation strongly focuses on the principle of co-
operation. Women are socialised into adopting a mode of speech that is geared
towards facilitating conversation. As a result, women tend to compromise quicker in
the mediation process for the sake of co-operation, even if this is detrimental to their
own material interests. Generally, women are less successful than men in courtroom
settings as well. Women are often perceived as less credible witnesses because they do
not offer the type of disembodied, abstract speech that is usually preferred in court.
In another chapter, the focus is on the transformation of disputes by the judicial
process. Often, claims are so drastically reformulated by judges, lawyers and clerks,
that litigants no longer recognise their own original account of events. The result is
that they are often disappointed by the legal system. However, instead of blaming the
system as such, claimants blame themselves or the particular judge dealing with their
case, which means that the macro-discourse of legal power remains unchallenged.
Language is once more at the centre of this process of disempowerment.
All of these examples suggest that language intervenes in maintaining and repro-
ducing the law’s power in everyday situations. The question that arises concerns how
far the authors’ findings can be generalised. Are the effects of language limited to the
American adversarial legal system or western societies in general, or does language
play a crucial element in other socio-cultural settings as well? Conley and O’Barr
demonstrate that micro-linguistic analysis can also be useful in generating a better
understanding of non-western legal systems and even historical settings, such as the
Roman Empire. They argue that it is crucial to pay closer attention to linguistic details
if researchers want to avoid the unjustified transposition of their own (western)
schemes of interpretation to legal systems with which they are less familiar, a mistake
often made in anthropological research. Similarly, the micro-linguistic study of his-
torical legal texts can yield a better insight in the mechanisms of power of past
societies.
This book certainly succeeds in demonstrating the usefulness of linguistic analysis
in socio-legal studies. At the same time it is also clear that there is still a considerable
174 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 9(1)
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