Abstract
Everyday legal discourse refers to the spoken language with which ordinary people constitute the law-in-action. In this article, we experimentally investigate the social distribution of rule-and relationally-oriented discourse found by ethnographers in small-claims court settings. We examine the influences of sex differences and social ties between disputants on these types of discourse in a mock small-claims setting using a quantitative content coding scheme. We do not find empirical support for sex differences in the production of simulated everyday legal discourse. The relational context of a dispute (operationalized as the strength of social ties between disputants) has significant effects on the distribution of rule-and relationally-oriented discourse, so that disputants in relationally-close contexts produce more relationally-oriented discourse and those in relationally-distant contexts produce more rule-oriented discourses than those in relationally-close contexts. With these findings as a backdrop, we discuss (1) the contextual nature of sex differences in everyday legal discourse; (2) discourse "switching" and emotional investment in personal relationships, and (3) applications for our coding scheme to studies of disputing frames.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 639-665 |
Number of pages | 27 |
Journal | Law and Society Review |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 1998 |
Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Law