PhD Student Domi Branson: Tag Questions and the Naturalization of Anti-Blackism in Courtroom Discourse.

Tag Questions and the Naturalization of Anti-Blackism in Courtroom Discourse.

Dominique Branson, Department of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh 

Critical discourse analysts investigate the relationship between individual instances of language and macro-level social inequality (van Dijk, 1993; Fairclough, 2001). Specifically, critical discourse analysts are interested in how language minutia, such as fine-grained phonetic detail in an utterance or word, can naturalize social inequality. Social inequality is naturalized when social phenomena are understood as, “the way things are” rather than the (in)direct result(s) of social practices that ought to be challenged and eradicated (Cameron, 2001, p. 123). For example, the over-representation of Black Americans in U.S. prisons is often misattributed to Blacks’ so-called “inherent” criminality (Pager, 2003; Alexander, 2010), rather than institutionalized anti-Blackism that permeates the United States’ Criminal Justice System. While the gap between individual instances of language and macro-level social inequality appears vast, critical discourse analysts argue that social cognition mediates between the two. Social cognition refers to the socially-shared representations of society and groups (van Dijk, 1993)—including anti-Black stereotypes that are naturalized in American society. 

            This paper investigates the relationship between individual instances of language and macro-level social inequality through an intonation analysis of tag questions used by a defense attorney in a 2013 criminal court trial. The attorney asks tag questions to two separate witnesses, the mother of his client (the defense’s witness) and the victim’s mother (the prosecution’s witness), who is a Black woman. When he asks tag questions to the victim’s mother, the degree of rise in the tag he uses, correct?, is much smaller than the degree of rise in the tag when he questions his client’s mother. As differences in tone on tags modify the degree to which speakers are understood as being certain of the truth of their propositions (McGregor, 1995:94), the attorney’s use of tags exhibiting smaller degrees of rise (as well as falling tone) with the victim’s mother cause him and his subjective propositions to be viewed as ‘truthful’. Subsequently, when the victim’s mother disagrees with the attorney and his propositions, she is seen as ‘dishonest’. The mother’s perception as ‘dishonest’ aligns with pre-existing anti-Black ideologies (Harris-Perry, 2011) which are then further naturalized by this discourse in the courtroom.