Underlying Narratives in Courtroom Exchanges.

Line Hjorth’s contribution “Underlying Narratives in Courtroom Exchanges” focuses on the unpredictable and immediate world of the courtroom. Hjorth’s basic claim is that most courtroom exchanges in criminal trials are informed by certain underlying (often non-verbalized) narratives that govern and shape the questions that are posed to witnesses and defendants and the answers to these questions. Through the notion “underlying narratives” she seeks to illuminate how certain strategically significant narratives are, often in subtle ways, promoted or rejected through the lingual exchanges in the courtroom. As a case in point she discusses the famed Norwegian “Orderud case”, where four people were charged with the murder of three persons – a mother, a father and their grown-up daughter – in a farm house in 1999. One of the significant features of this case was that the defendants, who claimed to have been wrongly accused, all had a different story about their own involvement (or non-involvement) in the events leading up to the crime. By reviewing recordings from the trial and comparing the exchanges to other kinds of documentation from the case, Hjorth highlights revealing connections between the courtroom exchanges, certain culturally significant stock stories and the strategic narratives informing the key actors’ verbal performance in the courtroom.