## Elin Waara & Philip Shaw*

## Male and Female Witnesses' Speech in Swedish Criminal Trials

## Abstract

The present quantitative study focuses on witnesses' speech in Swedish criminal trials, more specifi  cally on potential differences between men's and women's language styles. Since the 1970s, research on language and gender has been divided into three main approaches towards the relationship between men's and women's language use: the defi  cit  approach, the dominance  approach and  the cultural  approach. The  present study uses the more recent dynamic approach to show how gender is acted out in each situation taking into account a number of factors, e.g. context. The aim of our work is  fi  rst  and foremost to study the possible correlation between the witnesses' gender and language in the courtroom context and then to investigate if income and/or level of education provide better explanations for possible variation by looking at a broad range  of  linguistic  variables.  The  results  show  no  statistically  signifi  cant  gender  or social status differences in the witnesses' speech. However, when comparing the results of the testifying police offi  cers accidentally included in the study with the rest of the witnesses, the differences turned out to be signifi  cant. This shows that, in this case, factors such as previous courtroom experience and familiarity with the context were probably more infl  uential  on  the  speech  of  the  informants  than  gender,  income  and education, in conformity with the assumptions of the dynamic approach.

## 1. Introduction 1

## 1.1.  Background

For the last three decades, a major topic in sociolinguistics has been the connection, if any, between the structures, vocabularies and ways

1 This paper is based on Waara's Stockholm University thesis for a Master's degree in Language and Law, which was supervised by Shaw. The research reported was carried out by Waara; the paper was written jointly.

*   Elin Waara & Philip Shaw Stockholm University Universitetsvågen 10 F SE-106 91  Stockholm philip.shaw@english.su.se

129

of using language of men and women and their social roles. Do men and women who use the same language, e.g. English, speak and write it in different ways? If so, why? From the early and mid-1970's, which is generally seen as the starting point for modern research on language and  gender,  and  onwards,  these  questions  have  been  discussed  in  a consi  derable number of research projects. 2

Many studies have found differences between the genders in terms of the frequency of certain features. Thus, in the foundational work in the fi  eld, Lakoff (1975) proposed that there is a 'women's language' (WL), characterised by more frequent use of specifi  c language forms, and  subsequent  work  has  often  found  that  women's  speech  differs (statistically) from men's in a variety of situations.

Four general approaches to explanation have arisen (Coates 2004:6). The earliest has been called a defi  cit approach , in which investi  ga  tion tended to favour men's language as the norm, seeing women's lan  guage as  different,  unconventional  and  even  incomplete.  Lakoff's  analysis has  been  seen  as  continuing  this  interpretation,  which  derives  from traditional patriarchal attitudes. The dominance theory holds that linguistic differences mirror the male rule or dominance in society at large. In other words, male power is enacted through language interaction in which both men and women take part resulting in different language styles (Zimmerman and West 1975, Fishman 1983, O'Barr and Atkins 1980). Today, however, the dominance approach has lost some of its credi  bility after several studies have been presented showing for instance women using more competitive linguistic  strategies  and  interrupting more than men in certain settings. The cultural approach argues that men  and  women  belong  to  different  sociolinguistic  subcultures  and there  fore  have  been  taught  different  styles  for  communication. They have to accept these styles to become fully adequate members of their cul  tures  (Nordenstam  1987;  1990,  Coates  1996,  Coates  &  Cameron 1988). Studies on women's subcultural life often place the emphasis on the private sphere where their speech is found to be more supportive, co-operative and emotionally involved.

2    The purposes of this research has been discussed for instance in Strand, Hans 1998: Att forska om språk och kön: två strategiska val. In Kraftfält: forskning om kön och journalistik , 161-169.

The most current outlook on gender differences in language use is the dynamic approach . According to this theory, gender is a cultural construc  tion,  not  a  predetermined  social  category  (Coates  2004:6-7, Thompson 2002:156) so that acting and talking like a man or a woman varies over time and between social, ethnic and cultural groups. Gender is accomplished in talk every time we speak. Speakers claim their roles anew  in  each  conversation  and  the  roles,  and  consequently  also  the degree of femininity and masculinity, vary depending on context. However,  choices  are  constrained  by  normative  pressures  acting  on  both men and women (Coates 2004:139-143). It is much harder to perform ver  sions  of  masculinity  or  femininity  that  challenge  the  dominant gender norms.

## 1.2.  Institutional discourse

A constant  theme  in  the  discussions  referred  to  above  has  been  that women's language may be adapted to a private sphere of, for example, friendship, family life, and other personal relations, while men's language is adapted to a public sphere including business meetings, politics, and the law. Many of the contexts in the public sphere require what has  been  classifi  ed  as  institutional  discourse.  This  has  been  defi  ned (Linell  1990:18-22,  Thornborrow  2002:4)  as  language:  (a)  produced in  contexts  where  there  are  predetermined  roles  or  positions  for  the partic  ipants; (b) having a structurally asymmetrical allocation of turn types between the participants; (c) produced in the interaction between asym  metrical parties: professionals (such as prosecutors and lawyers) and lay  people (such  as  defendants  and  witnesses);  and  (d)  with  an orientation towards dealing with a certain matter or solving a specifi  c prob  lem, which is more or less always the reason for the interaction.

## 1.3.  Gender in courtroom language

Courtroom  discourse  meets  these  criteria  for  institutional  discourse. Most  court  proceedings  are  highly  asymmetrical  in  that  some  participants have more power over dialogues than others. There are clearly specifi  ed roles for the participants that decide their speech performances and their discursive space. The professionals (judges, prosecutors and lawyers) ask questions that the lay people (defendants, plaintiffs and witnesses) are required to answer. The lay people are not allowed to contribute  information  randomly  during  the  proceedings.  They  are also to a varying degree personally affected by what dialogues revolve around.  This  makes  them  vulnerable  compared  to  the  professionals, who are present only as a result of their professional responsibilities. Of course, for someone who is ignorant of the ways court proceedings are conducted, it is usually benefi  cial to hand over responsibilities and ini  tiatives to professionals.

Court proceedings depend to a great extent on appropriate use of lan  guage. It is natural therefore to suspect that the different gender language  practices  found  in  other  areas  of  communication  will  also  be mani  fested in the courtroom and that this might affect the outcome of the trial. This is clearly an important issue and it has been investigated both in the US and in Scandinavia. O'Barr and Atkins (1980) analysed a total of 150 hours of trials recorded in 1974 in a North Carolina superior criminal  court  registering  all  instances  of  the  features  described  by Lakoff as women's language. The researchers found that although more women than  men  used  women's  language  features,  some  male  witnesses also used them. O'Barr and Atkins claimed that the factor unit  ing people using women's language in the courtroom setting was the fact that they were generally more socially powerless. Their fi  ndings can be summarised as follows: Lakoff's term women's language was misleading and they therefore suggested re-naming it 'powerless language' (PL). They argued that the tendency for women to use powerless language more than men was due to the greater predisposition for them to be in powerless social positions rather than it being an effect of their gender, thus supporting the dominance position.

Erickson et al. (1978) proceeded to test the effects of using powerless language in a simulation. They recorded on tape one of the typical power  less testimonies from O'Barr and Atkins' study, acted out fi  rst by a woman and then by a man. The powerless testimony was then edited so that the powerless features were omitted producing an example of a power  ful testimony, which was also recorded on tape. The four tapes were then played to or read by university students taking the role of jurors. Regardless of the gender of the witness and of the students, the students who heard the recordings of the actors using powerful language thought the witnesses to be more credible, competent, intelligent and trustworthy than those students who listened to the powerless recordings. There were no signifi  cant differences in the evaluations between the female and the male actors performing the testimonies. This seems to  be  convincing  evidence  for  the  dominance  explanation,  but  later writers such as Thompson (2002) have questioned whether such labo  ratory evidence refl  ects actual court processes.

Schlyter (1986) performed a case study of the speech of two women and one man before the Swedish Labour Court. The dispute concerned whe  ther  the  man,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  women,  on  the  other, had  similar  occupational  tasks  and  therefore  should  have  equal  pay. Schlyter analysed transcripts of the tape-recorded trial and concluded that the outcome of the trial, which was negative for the women, could have depended on differences in expression between the man and the wo  men. The man spoke much more and performed monologues with few questions to keep him going. He used more complex language and was not afraid of promoting himself and his work tasks. The two women spoke less, one of them hardly speaking at all, and there was more of a dialogue between them and the professionals asking the questions. Their language was simpler and they repeatedly down-toned themselves and their work efforts. Schlyter provided a cultural explanation: women learn from the start not to show off, which results in more hesitant and deferen  tial language.

Further support for the cultural explanation is evidence that gender is so infl  uential as a factor, even in institutional settings, that it outweighs status.  West  (1998)  looked  at  interruptions  using  21  video-recorded encounters between doctors and patients at a local clinic. She found that not only did male physicians interrupt their patients, of either gender, far more often than the reverse, but male patients interrupted women physicians more than the physicians interrupted them. The interruptions were used to gain or assert control and/or dominance. West's fi  ndings support those of Woods (1989) who recorded three-party conversations between  colleagues  of  different  work  status.  Occupational  role  and status infl  uenced the speakers' ability to hold the fl  oor to a certain extent but it was still the men who dominated regardless of whether they were bosses  or  subordinates.  These  rather  surprising  fi  ndings  suggest  that even when a woman has the role of professional or superordinate in an institutional context, it is her gender and not her institutional role that decides who interrupts whom. Gender amounts to a 'master' status and its effects are visible in all situations.

## 1.4.  Aim

The studies discussed above give the impression that gender differences in institutional discourse are generally quite easy to spot. In the courtroom context especially, the differences seem very salient and clearcut. Schlyter's material is extremely small, one single case, and still she could detect large differences. O'Barr and Atkins' material is extensive and hence quite convincing for the US situation. Schlyter's case study suggests that similar conditions apply in Sweden. 3  If this is true, it is a serious issue that requires attention by court professionals to ensure equal treatment of the genders.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether men and women do indeed speak differently in Swedish criminal trial processes. We worked from  recordings  of  examinations  of  witnesses  by  court  professional (prosecutors and lawyers). For those acting as witnesses, the dependent variables were linguistic or discoursal parameters selected from those examined  in  the  studies  discussed  above.  These  were  examined  for possible relationships to the independent variables gender, professional status (restricted to the poles police offi  cer/civilian), income and level of education. Court professionals' speech to witnesses was examined in terms of three dependent variables: interruptions, simultaneous speech and supporting utterances. The independent variables here were gender of speaker and gender of addressee.

The study aimed to be exploratory and complementary to Schlyter's case study. We therefore chose to look at a broad range of linguistic variables  across  a  wide  variety  of  speakers,  in  contrast  to  Schlyter's detailed examination of a single case. The investigation is strictly quantitative and we do not go into qualitative considerations regarding the individual testimonies.

3 For more research on language use in Swedish trials, see Aronsson, Karin, Jönsson, Linda  &  Linell,  Per  1987:  The  Courtroom  Hearing  as  a  Middle  Ground:  Speech Accommodation  by  Lawyers  and  Defendants . In Journal  of  Language  and  Social Psychology 6 , 99-115 and Jönsson, Linda 1988: On Being Heard in Court Trials and Police  Interrogations.  A  study  of  discourse  in  two  institutional  contexts .  Linköping Studies of Arts and Science 25. Linköpings universitet.

## 2. Hypotheses and defi  nitions

## 2.1.  Hypotheses

The overall hypothesis in this study was that O'Barr and Atkins and Schlyter  are  right  to  suggest  that  there  are  differences  between  how men and women speak in the courtroom context, but that, as the dyna  m  ic approach suggests, men may speak using language features tradi  tional  ly regarded as female and vice versa. Therefore, gender alone is insuffi  cient to explain the variations. Other factors, such as income and level of education (broadly, social power), we hypothesised, better explain the differences: people with high education and large income tend  to  be  low  in  language  features  traditionally  regarded  as  female and people with little education and low income use more of the female features.

It was hypothesised that the differences would be manifested in the following areas: amount of speech, frequency of interruptions, use of simult  aneous speech, use of supporting utterances, use of questions, use of hedges, occurrence of pauses, and use of pause fi  llers.

Based on previous research on public and semi-public language, e.g. Almlöv (1995), Gunnarsson (1995) and Einarsson and Hultman (1984), we hypothesised that the male witnesses would be more talkative than the female witnesses. They would speak for a longer time using more words and their  utterances  would  be  longer. The  women  would  talk using more but shorter utterances.

Interruptions in informal conversations have been found to be most often used by men as a way of controlling conversations (Zimmerman and West 1975). Almlöv (1995) showed that men also interrupted more than women in an academic seminar setting, which is a formal institutional context similar to the trial setting. We hypothesised that the male witnesses would interrupt more than the female witnesses. Further, we hypothesised that the male professionals would interrupt more than the female  professionals,  following  the  general  fi  ndings  of  researchers, despite the possibility that the women have adapted to the male con  versation norm and over-compensate so that they become more aggressive in their speech style than the men, as seen in the Thelander study of women politicians (1986).

Simultaneous speech is common in everyday private conversations, especially between women (Nordenstam 1987). The literature led us to hypothesise that most simultaneous speech would occur when women court professionals were speaking to women witnesses, although in fact because this is institutional discourse, it seemed likely that there would be relatively few instances of simultaneous speech overall, so that gender differences would not be apparent.

In private settings, women use more supporting utterances than men regard  less  of  whom  they  speak  to  (Nordenstam  1987  and  Fishman 1983). Because of the institutional setting, we did not expect to see such a difference in our material. It seems, however, intuitively likely that power  ful speakers in such a context (at least in Scandinavia) may wish to be supportive of (some) less powerful speakers, perhaps particularly female ones. We therefore hypothesised that the professionals would use more supporting utterances than the witnesses because of the power difference, and that the female witnesses would receive more sup  porting utterances than the male witnesses.

Questions  are  regarded  by  Schlyter  (1986),  following  Lakoff,  as among the linguistic characteristics signalling insecurity displayed by wo  men attending meetings and seminars. We hypothesised that this is true in a court context as well.

Hedges are defi  ned as a group of linguistic devices that supposedly soften utterances by signalling imprecision and non-commitment such as the particles about and sort of and the modal terms possibly and perhaps (Dixon and Foster 1997:90).  As noted above, hedges have tra  di  tional  ly been regarded as characteristically female or powerless language features. The importance of giving accurate and exact informa  tion in court  proceedings  is  well  known  and  therefore,  many  witnesses  will feel insecure and use vagueness markers to cover themselves against possibly giving false information. We hypothesised that we would fi  nd quite a few hedges in the witnesses' speech as a result of the formal and unusual context, and that women and less educated wit  nesses would use more hedges.

Silent  pauses  were  found  by  Olevard  (1997)  to  be  more  frequent and longer in men's speech in post-graduate seminars than in women's speech. We hypothesised that we would fi  nd more pauses in the male wit  nesses' speech than in the female witnesses' speech.

There is research showing that men use more pause fi  llers than women (Olevard 1997, Adelswärd 1999). We hypothesised that this would be the case in our study as well. The men are eager to keep talk  ing and therefore fi  ll possible gaps in their speech with sounds to make it harder for other speakers to cut in.

## 2.2.  Defi  nitions

Full defi  nitions of all the variables examined are given in Waara (2004). In this paper we focus on amount of speech, hedges, silent pauses, and fi  lled  pauses,  since these were the variables on which our discussion con  centrates.

## 2.2.1. Amount of speech

The variable amount of speech includes fi  ve sub-variables: total length of speech in seconds, number of words and utterances, words per utterance and length of utterance. We count as words all lexical and grammatical items.

An utterance is what is said before or after another person begins to speak, which may be one word or one/several sentences (Richards et al. 1985). This defi  nition has been extended here to include simultaneous speech, which is also counted as an utterance belonging to the person who produces it. Supporting utterances are also counted as utterances. We make no distinction between cases where a person is interrupted and therefore stops talking leaving the utterance unfi  nished and those where the speaker stops because he or she has fi  nished the utterance.

## 2.2.2. Hedges

We have chosen to study the hedges I don't know, I think, maybe and I guess/suppose as described by Lindroth (1996). 4  Most of the time the phrase I don't know is added as a comment in a discussion on a certain topic of which the speaker has some knowledge but is insecure of the details. In such cases, the addition of I  don't  know signals insecurity and indirectness (Lindroth 1996:10-11) as for instance in the following example.

4    The phrases are translations of the Swedish jag vet inte , jag tror , kanske and väl .

## Example 1:

W: Then Kim went inside I don't know what he did then I talked to John about it for a while /// he also said that it wasn't true 5

W knows that Kim went inside and when he did so in relation to what W was doing but not what Kim was doing in there.

I think and maybe also show insecurity on the part of the speaker but less so compared to I don't know , as is displayed in the extracts below.

## Example 2:

W: … Danielle fell to the ground and then Kim ran into the house and Monika ran after him / and Danielle she I think she was unconscious because eh she- she had her eyes closed when she was lying on the ground but she opened her eyes after a few seconds so I helped her up and then she was really upset and scared and stuff 6

## Example 3:

W: He stood a couple- we stood there by the opp- eh opposite the fi  tting rooms and / would we were sitting looking at clothes standing there looking at clothes / and he stood next to us maybe two two three meters away / and he was staring at us … 7

I guess/suppose is used frequently in various situations and has general  ly been regarded as a confi  rmation marker, i.e. a sign that a speaker wants  confi  rmation  from  a  listener  that  what  he  or  she  is  saying  is true  or  correct  (Aijmer  1977).  This  kind  of  confi  rmation-seeking  is illustrated by the following example.

5    W: Sen gick Kim in ja vet inte va han gjorde sen så prata ja me John om de här ett tag /// han sa också att de inte va sant

6    W: … Danielle föll ner på marken å då sprang Kim in i huset å Monika sprang efter honom / å Danielle hon ja tror hon va medvetslös för att eh hon- hon hade ögonen stängda när hon låg på marken fast hon öppnade dom efter nåra sekunder så hjälpte ja henne upp å så va hon jätteledsen å rädd å så

7    W: Han stod ett par- vi stod där vid mitt- eh mittemot hytterna å / skulle vi satt å kolla på kläder stod å kolla på kläder / å han stod bredvid oss kanske två två tre meter ifrån / å han stirrade på oss …

## Example 4:

W: Well  when  I  was  questioned  by  the  police  I  guess  I  said about / well I'm thinking thumb- it was really diffi  cult / but I guess it was // like this on the chin yeah somewhere here 8

I  guess/suppose is  often  used  without much thought on the part of a speaker, for example to gain extra time to plan a following utterance or when the speaker simply does not know what to say. Even in such cases, it  could  be  said  that I  guess/suppose signals  insecurity  or  hesitation, which makes it possible to defi  ne it as a hedge (Lindroth 1996:11).

## 2.2.3. Pauses

Pauses are silent gaps in speech. Pauses are very common and have different functions as described by Olevard (1997) but a very large part of them are 'thought pauses', i.e. when a speaker does not know what to  say  and  needs  time  to  think,  and  'hesitation  pauses',  i.e.  when  a speaker knows what to say but not how to say it (Olevard 1997a:23).

In this work we do not distinguish between different kinds of pauses but consider them all as one variable. Silence between two utterances that lasts more than three seconds are not counted as belonging to any speaker (McLaughlin's method in Almlöv 1995:9). Pauses shorter than three seconds are attributed to the last speaker.

## 2.2.4. Pause fi  llers

Pause  fi  llers  are  utterances  such  as eh interjected  between  words  or parts of words in an utterance. Like silent pauses, they are very frequent in speech (Olevard 1997:25). Silent pauses and pause fi  llers are both illustrated by the following example.

## Example 5:

W: Yeah there was a wisp of hair on the kitchen shelf / eh that she said came from her I guess she tried to show on her head where exactly it came from but it was still hard to see / eh see exactly where it had been but / it looked like it came from her and / then // she had a / swelling on her le- her cheek 9

8    W: Ja när ja hördes av polisen så sa ja väl runt nån / ja ja tänker tum- ja asså de va väldigt svårt / men de va väl en // så satt på hakan på nåt sätt ja nånstans här

From the content of W's speech it is clear that there is some hesitation as to the exact details of the incident. This leads to W pausing quite a bit and using many types of fi  ller. However, fi  llers also have other possible functions.  Norrby  (2004:217)  mentions  for  instance  that  the  use  of fi  llers can sometimes be interpreted as an attempt to keep and prolong a speaker's turn, especially in public speech.

## 3. Material

## 3.1.  Primary material and selection

Witness statements in proceedings in Swedish courts are routinely taperecorded and the resulting tapes are generally offi  cial documents available to the public. We selected from this bank of data in such a way as to provide a sample as representative of the population of Stock  holm as possible, with equal gender representation and maximum geographical and social coverage, as was appropriate for the aim of complementing Schlyter's case study.

We obtained tapes of 19 criminal trials conducted in either 2003 or 2004, selected by court offi  cials on an arbitrary basis, and examined 2.5-minute  extracts  from  31  tape-recorded  testimonies,  16  given  by wo  men and 15 given by men. Some trials provided two or three testimo  nies, but none more than three. Equal numbers of female and male testimonies  were  initially  collected  from  each  court:  eight  men  and eight women. At a quite late stage, it turned out that one of the male witnesses had testifi  ed twice, in two different cases. His second testimo  ny was excluded from the study, resulting in our only having seven male testimonies from Nacka district court.

The tape recordings were obtained from two different district courts, Nacka  and  Handen,  in  the  province  of  Stockholm.  The  province  of Stockholm is segregated socially and ethnically, so to avoid the risk of ending up with witness statements from an unrepresentative group of informants, we collected the testimonies from two courts responsible for socially different areas. Nacka district court covers two municipalities with an average income per year of 257,134 kr, which is the second highest of the eight judicial districts of the province of Stockholm 10 , whereas  Handen  district  court  covers  three  municipalities  with  an average income of 225,739 kr, the third lowest in the province.

9    W: Ja de låg ju en hårtuss på köksbänken / eh som hon sa att den kom från henne då hon försökte väl visa den också då på på huvet var exakt den hade suttit men de va ändå svårt å se / eh se exakt var den hade suttit men / det såg ut som den kom från henne och / sen så // hade hon ju en / svullnad på ena be- ena kinden

We used the fi  rst  2.5  minutes  of  the  testimonies  starting  from  the fi  rst question posed by either the prosecutor or the defence lawyer depend  ing on who called the witness to testify. In total, 1 hour and 17.5 minutes of talk were analysed. The extracts from the testimonies were transcribed according to a transcription key based on Almlöv (1995:77). After listening to and transcribing the 2.5-minutes-long segments of all the testimonies, we noted the number of occurrences of the language features chosen and described above.

Thanks  to  the  openness  of  the  Swedish  legal  and  administrative system, we were able to obtain the addresses of the witnesses (or, if they were police offi  cers, the districts in which they worked) and to use this information to obtain their income from employment (mostly for the year 2002, which was the most current available information in the public registers at the time). We could estimate the level of education of the non-police witnesses from public records of student grants and/or loans received. The 12 police offi  cers in the study were all assumed to have attended and completed the Police Academy, which is a university level education.

One of the police offi  cers could not be found in the records of the personnel offi  ce  and  so  he  was  excluded  from the analysis based on income.  One  of  the  male  witnesses  could  not  be  found  in  the  Tax Authority's records. He was therefore excluded from the data relating to income and education.

10   The average income in the whole province of Stockholm is 240,633 kr per year. The national average is 203,257 kr. Statistics from Statistiska centralbyrån (www.scb.se).

## 4. Method

## 4.1.  Selection of method

We chose a quantitative method to get an overview of linguistic interac  tion  in  the  given  context  (Gunnarsson  1995:7),  to  contrast  with Schlyter's close-up case study. The method, comprising counting and analys  ing  language  variables,  has  revealed  interesting  differences  in lan  guage use in earlier studies, for instance in Einarsson and Hultman (1984) and Gunnarsson (1995).

## 4.2.  Handling of the material

The witnesses were categorised in four different ways. First, they were grouped based on gender. Second, the information on income was used to rank the witnesses starting with the witness with the highest income and ending with the witness earning least money. The upper half of the group was regarded as belonging to the high income group, the other half as belonging to the low income group. Third, all informants who had  studied  at  university  level  were  regarded  as  university  educated regardless of the length and quality of the studies. The ones without any university-level education were put in the other group. Fourth, all police offi  cers formed one group and the rest of the witnesses made up the other group.

For  eight  of  the  variables  (length,  words,  utterances,  length/utterance,  words/utterance,  hedges,  pauses  and  fi  llers),  mean  values  and stan  dard deviations were compared between the two groups for each para  meter. Student's t tests were performed comparing scores for each of the eight variables using GraphPad Prism 4 for the two groups across all para  meters. Selected data in combination were then tested in each para  meter  using  multivariate  tests  performed  in  STATA™  Statistics/ Data Analysis to see if there was any correlation between the variables with  in the groups defi  ned by each parameter.

There were relatively few instances of the remaining four variables interruptions, simultaneous speech, supporting utterances and questions, so they were only analysed descriptively and are not discussed here. This was also the case for the three variables interruptions, simultaneous speech and supporting utterances relating to the professionals' speech, but in this case a brief description is given.

## 5. Results

## 5.1.  Witnesses' speech

We start out by presenting the mean values and standard deviations for the witnesses' speech for eight of the 12 variables: length, words, utterances, length/utterance, words/utterance, hedges, pauses and fi  llers.

Following this data are the statistical results obtained from applying two kinds of parametric tests, Student's t tests and multivariate tests, on the data.

| Parameter   | Gender   | Gender   | Income   | Income   | Education   | Education      | Professional status   | Professional status   |
|-------------|----------|----------|----------|----------|-------------|----------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|
| Group       | Women    | Men      | High     | Low      | University  | Not university | Police                | Other                 |
| Length      | 110±22   | 105±25   | 107±24   | 110±22   | 105±21      | 114±24         | 105±23                | 110±24                |
| Words       | 275±47   | 253±56   | 259±49   | 272±55   | 265±50      | 269±54         | 256±55                | 270±51                |
| Utterances  | 8±4      | 10±7     | 7±4      | 9±6      | 9±5         | 8±5            | 7±4                   | 10±7 1                |
| Words/u     | 68±82    | 44±33    | 66±84    | 48±42    | 44±31       | 73±87          | 50±33                 | 60±78                 |
| Length/u    | 28±38    | 18±13    | 28±38    | 20±18    | 18±12       | 31±37          | 20±12                 | 25±33                 |
| Hedges      | 3±2      | 3±2      | 2±1      | 2±2      | 2±1         | 3±2            | 2±1                   | 3±2                   |
| Pauses      | 18±8     | 14±6     | 15±5     | 18±9     | 15±5        | 17±9           | 14±5                  | 17±8 2                |
| Fillers     | 7±4      | 8±5      | 8±4      | 7±6      | 9±5         | 6±4 1          | 10±5                  | 6±4**                 |

1 p = 0.14 (in both cases)

2 p = 0.08

** p= 0.02

Table  1.  Mean  values  and  standard  deviations  for  the  witnesses, categorised by four different criteria.

The p-values given in Table 1 derive from a t-test, which determines whether there is a statistically signifi  cant difference between two groups of informants. There were no signifi  cant differences for any of the three parameters gender, income or education for any of the variables.

For the parameter professional status (police-other), the p value for the variable fi  llers displays a statistically signifi  cant difference. Also, the p values for utterances and silent pauses are fairly close to showing a signifi  cant difference (p = 0.14 and p = 0.08).

There is a risk when performing repeated t tests on many variables such  as  in  this  case  that  some  results  turn  out  signifi  cant  by  chance

(Woods, Fletcher and Hughes 1986:128). To minimise this risk, multivariate  tests  were  also  performed  in  each  category.  A  multivariate test  combines  several  variables  in  one  multidimensional  test  to  see whether there are any signifi  cant differences in each category when the variables are tested for together. Here, six variables were tested for in each category: length, words, utterances, hedges, pauses and fi  llers. The two proportional variables length/utterance and words/utterance were excluded because they are not independent of the others.

Table 2 shows the p values of the multivariate tests for each category of witnesses. As can be seen, the results in the three categories womenmen, high income-low income and university educated-not university educated are nonsignifi  cant. In the category police-others however, there is a statistically signifi  cant difference (p = 0.04) when all parameters are tested for at the same time.

| Criteria            | Numbers in each group   |   p values for all variables combined |
|---------------------|-------------------------|---------------------------------------|
| Gender              | 16-15                   |                                   0.7 |
| Income              | 14-15                   |                                   0.7 |
| Education           | 16-14                   |                                   0.3 |
| Professional status | 12-19                   |                                  0.04 |

Table  2.  p  values  from  multivariate  tests  for  the  four  categories  of witnesses.

## 5.2.  The court professionals' speech

The court professionals also produced relatively few instances of the variables interruptions, simultaneous speech and supporting utterances. The data were therefore not suitable for statistical analysis, but some of the results are suggestive and are discussed below.

Table  3.  Instances  of  various  features  in  the  speech  of  court  professionals.

| Gender of court professional    | All   | All   | All   | Female   | Female   | Female   | Male   | Male   | Male   |
|---------------------------------|-------|-------|-------|----------|----------|----------|--------|--------|--------|
| Gender of witness               | Total | F     | M     | Total    | F        | M        | Total  | F      | M      |
| Number of examinations          | 31    | 16    | 15    | 13       | 9        | 4        | 18     | 7      | 11     |
| Number of instances of variable |       |       |       |          |          |          |        |        |        |
| Interruptions                   | 12    | 2     | 10    | 1        | 0        | 1        | 11     | 2      | 9      |
| Simultaneous speech             | 14    | 6     | 8     | 7        | 4        | 3        | 7      | 2      | 5      |
| Supporting utterances           | 93    | 49    | 44    | 45       | 36       | 9        | 48     | 13     | 35     |

Table 3 shows that simultaneous speech and supporting utterances were distributed fairly equally among speakers, but interruptions were mainly produced by male professionals and most of these were interruptions of male witnesses. Simultaneous speech was directed fairly evenly to witnesses of both genders, but supporting utterances were on average twice as frequently directed to witnesses of the professionals' own gender as to those of the opposite gender, as illustrated in Table 4.

Table 4. Frequency of supporting language (instances per examination) by gender of interacting pairs.

| Court professional gender   | Witness gender   | Witness gender   |
|-----------------------------|------------------|------------------|
|                             | F                | M                |
| F                           | 4                | 2.25             |
| M                           | 1.9              | 3.2              |

## 6. Discussion

## 6.1.  Support for the main hypotheses?

The overall hypothesis made for this study was that there are differences between how men and women speak in the courtroom context but that gender  alone  is  insuffi  cient  to  explain  the  variations.  Other  factors, such as income and level of education, we hypothesised, would better explain the differences. The results we have arrived at do not support these hypotheses. None of the p values show any statistically signifi  cant differences  in  the  categories  women-men,  high  income-low  income and university educated-not university educated. This is not however merely an effect of sample size or method, since signifi  cant differences were found between civilian and police witnesses. It is clear that any differences that do exist on the parameters expected are smaller than those due to the police/civilian parameter.

The fact that gender differences were not picked up could mean that there were in fact no differences in this specifi  c context. Regardless of gender and social background, the witnesses in this study used the same speech style in the courtroom context. There are current studies both supporting (Nohara 1992) and rejecting (Gunnarsson 1995) this idea and the situation is far from clear.

A  power-estimate  test  performed  on  the  data  for  the  women-men category shows that the sample size would have had to be up to 115 times larger to obtain statistically signifi  cant results. This points to gender variations being subtle, which results in a need for a large sample size to be able to detect them. 11  The relatively small size of the ma  terial  in  the  present  study  (1  hour  and  17.5  minutes) compared to studies showing gender-based language differences, e.g. the O'Barr and Atkins study (1980), could be another reason for the lack of gender differ  ences.

Our results tend to suggest that the large gender differences found in the Schlyter study (1986) are not representative. This could be due to the topic of the trial in the Schlyter study, which was gender discrimination.  Gender was therefore very much in focus, which could have encouraged the participants to do gender (Coates 2004) rather explicitly. Also,  Schlyter  performed  the  study  after  receiving  indications  from others that the case was exceptional with regard to the language of the lay people. In other words, she did not choose the case randomly and the results can therefore not be said to be representative of all cases.

11 The obvious limitation of a power-estimate test is that it assumes that the results of the present study are generalisable to all witnesses' speech, which is far from certain. It could be that the witnesses in this study are exceptional in many ways and that perhaps even more witnesses would have been required in reality than the test shows.

Another  explanation  for  the  absence  of  gender-based  differences in  the  current  study  could  be  that  the  differences  were  materialised in  ways  not  covered  by  the  method.  Culpepper  and  Kytö  (2000:82) stressed that even though men and women speak differently in some ways, they speak similarly in many more ways. The research in this fi  eld is far from unanimous regarding how differences are represented in speech. Also, variables that have shown frequency differences in one con  text  might  not  turn  out  to  vary  in  another  context  (Nohara  1992, Dixon and Foster 1990).

It might also be that gender and social status are not very salient in the courtroom context. The specifi  c circumstances of giving a witness statement in court might take over so that gender and social status as possible  factors  infl  uencing  language  use  are  overshadowed  by  the requirements  and  expectations  of  the  specifi  c  situation.  Instead  of witnesses speaking in a typically female or male, rich or poor, or educated or uneducated style, they might use a common courtroom style. This was observed by Reid et al. (2003) who found that women used more ten  tative language in discussions where gender had been made salient compared  to  low  gender  salience  discussions  where  instead  student identity was salient. In the latter situations, men and women used about the same amount of tentative language. In this sense our fi  ndings are sup  portive of a dynamic interpretation of language-and-gender effects.

12 of the 31 witnesses happened to be police offi  cers. Police offi  cers are generally used to testifying in court and therefore familiar with the context. This could have evened out potential gender differences thereby affecting the results. In retrospect, one solution would have been to exclude the police offi  cers from the study and focused strictly on the other witnesses. However, the number of informants would then have been only 19 (seven men and 12 women), which would not have been enough to perform this kind of study.

Finally, the categories used for analysis might have obscured effects. Thus,  for  example,  our  undifferentiated  simultaneous  speech  could cover both supportive and aggressive acts which might be differently distributed.

We will now go on to discuss the results for the various parameters in relation to individual experimental variables.

## 7. Individual hypotheses

## 7.1.  Gender

Amount of speech. We hypothesised that the male witnesses would be more talkative  than  the  female  witnesses.  The  results  show  no  such difference  either  in  the  basic  data  (length,  words  and  utterances)  or in the proportional data (length/utterance and words/utterance). There could be many reasons for this.

Questioning witnesses belongs to the examination phase of a trial. During this part of the trial, the professionals pose questions to the lay people who answer them according to the different discursive functions of their institutional roles. In other words, the participants get different kinds  of  turns  with  which  they  are  expected  to  do  different  things (Thornborrow 2002).

Our material includes the initial 2.5 minutes of each testimony. All 31 witness examinations were initiated roughly in the same way. First, the professionals made sure the witnesses knew what incident was at issue in the trial, for instance as in the extract below.

You experienced an incident on the third of January this year

P: on / eh Garden Street

W: Yeah that's right= 12

Thereafter the professionals usually continued by asking the witnesses to  describe  the  incident  in  their  own  words  such  as  in  the  example below, which is the continuation of the above extract. 13

P:= Yeah could you tell us what happened

W: Yeah I came out of the pizza place I was going to get some tools I was eh / well fi  xing some water there … 14

After this initial exchange, the witnesses were usually allowed to give their  accounts  quite  freely  without  much  intervention  from  the  pro- fessionals.  In  many  cases,  the  witnesses'  fi  rst  utterance  lasted  more than a minute. This means that the speech we captured was mainly of mono  logical character on the part of the witnesses with a few questions insert  ed by the professionals here and there to encourage the witnesses to go on or to clarify some facts.

12   W: Du har varit me om en händelse som inträffade den 3:e januari i år på / eh Trädgårdsvägen

W: Ja de stämmer=

13 One exception was an expert witness who was instead asked to describe carefully some technical details.

14   P:= Ja kan du berätta va de va som hän de

W: Ja ja kom ut från pizzerian ja skulle hämta lite verktyg ja skulle eh / ja fi  xa nån vatten där …

The men and the women responded in a similar way to the pro  fessionals'  encouragement to give their own accounts of what they had experienced. They talked  for  almost  the  same  amount  of  time  using practically the same number of words and utterances. In most cases we looked at, the witnesses were impartial bystanders, friends or family of the victims or police offi  cers. For the bystanders, friends and family members, the memories of the incidents at trial seemed very much alive and in most cases, they had no problems retelling at length and in detail what they had experienced. Generally speaking, all witnesses fi  lled the 2.5 minutes with mainly monological speech without diffi  culty.

This means that the language we studied was quite different from the language used in many other studies. Looking back at the studies summar  ised above that report gender differences, many of them focused on dia  logical or semi-dialogical language, i.e. when two or more people speak as part of an interaction, e.g. Einarsson and Hultman (1984) and Gunnarsson (1995), and not on monological speech. In the legal area, turn-taking rules are strict and do not allow confi  dent speakers to seize turns.

Interruptions. We hypothesised that the male witnesses would interrupt more than the female witnesses. Further, we hypothesised that the male professionals  would  interrupt  more  than  the  female  professionals, following the general fi  ndings of researchers, with the rider that female court  professionals  might  have  (over-)  adapted  to  a  male  norm.  Our data show that witnesses very rarely interrupt court professionals, but that  it  is  possible  that  male  professionals  do  indeed  interrupt  more than females ones. If true, this is one of the few cases in which gender appears to be a relevant category in court interactions.

Simultaneous  speech. The  literature  led  us  to  hypothesise  that  most simul  tan  eous  speech  would  occur  when  women  court  professionals were speaking to women witnesses but simultaneous speech was in- frequent and there was no trend. Again, the court situation seems to over-rule possible gender norms.

Hedges .  We  hypothesised  that  there  would  be  no  differences  in  the use of hedges between the genders but possibly between people with different levels of education and income as in the O'Barr and Atkins study (1980). The results show no gender differences that were statistical  ly  signifi  cant,  which  verifi  es  our  hypothesis.  The  results  could  be explained by the fact that the witnesses were not under any particular pressure during the parts of the examinations that were included in this study. The witnesses were left alone telling their stories with few interven  ing or challenging questions by the professionals. Therefore, the witnesses felt quite secure and had little reason to use tentative language, which ought to be the main function of the hedges we studied.

Supporting utterances. We hypothesised that the professionals would use more supporting utterances than the witnesses and that the female wit  nesses  would  receive  more  supporting  utterances  than  male  witnesses. Unsurprisingly, our data confi  rmed that the court power structure meant that support came mainly from the professionals, but interesting  ly they also suggested that speakers show some kind of gender solidarity, providing more supporting utterances for their own gender. Since this fi  nding has no support in the literature, it may be an artefact or something that needs further investigation.

Questions : Schlyter regarded questions from witnesses as manifesting insecurity  and  typical  of  female  speakers.  In  our  data  they  were  too infrequent for comment.

Pauses and pause fi  llers . Our hypotheses were that the male witnesses would use more silent pauses as well as pause fi  llers in their speech based on Olevard's fi  ndings (1997a). None of these hypotheses were verifi  ed statistically for the category women-men. As with hedges, pauses and fi  llers have been interpreted as signs of insecurity. Since the witnesses were not put under very much pressure during the examination phase studied here, there were no signifi  cant results regarding the use of either pauses or fi  llers.

## 7.2.  Income and education

No statistically relevant differences were seen in these two categories. The parameters examined here do not differentiate witnesses by so  cial status. This might have been due to one or more of the general explanations mentioned above or conceivably to inaccuracies in the publiclyavail  able  data. The  difference  from  O'Barr and Atkins' results could also  refl  ect  cultural  differences  between  North  Carolina  in  1978  and Stockholm in 2002-3. The relatively narrower class differences in Scandi  navia may be refl  ected in less differentiated speech patterns.

## 7.3.  Professional status

The only parameter along which there were any statistically signifi  cant dif  ferences is professional status (police-others). Three variables tested  separately  showed  signifi  cant  or  near-signifi  cant  differences  and a  multivariate  test  using  all  six  variables  showed  a  signifi  cant  difference between the speech styles of the police offi  cers and the other witnesses.

In  our  study,  the  police  offi  cers  (nine  men  and  four  women)  used fewer silent pauses than the other witnesses. This could be explained by their familiarity with trial proceedings and the courtroom context in general. This factor might have brought a sense of security and facilitated fl  uent speech.

On the other hand, the police offi  cers used more fi  llers than the rest of the witnesses, which has also been interpreted as a sign of insecurity. It could be the case that the police offi  cers were in fact just as insecure as the other witnesses with the exception that they chose to use pause fi  llers instead of falling silent when hesitating. However, it could also be that fi  llers do not function in the same way as silent pauses. When someone falls silent, he or she is more or less inviting another person to take over the turn whether it is fi  nished or not (Zimmerman and West 1975). Fillers, on the other hand, do not invite other speakers to cut in to the same degree since the fi  rst speaker continues making sounds even when he or she is hesitating or planning a new utterance. Therefore, we suggest that fi  llers are not in fact signs of insecurity. On the contrary, use  of  fi  llers  shows  that  a  speaker  wishes  to  continue  talking  even though he or she is in need of a pause, which makes sense in the case of the police offi  cers in this study. Despite the formality of the situation, the offi  cers felt at ease and were keen on holding the fl  oor and testifying without being interrupted. Therefore they used fewer silent pauses and more fi  llers on average than the other witnesses.

This is confi  rmed by the fact that the police offi  cers spoke using fewer and therefore also longer utterances than the other witnesses (seven versus ten utterances on average). Owing to the police offi  cers' previous  knowledge and experience, the professionals  less  often  had  to cut in to ask complementing questions, which made the police offi  cers' utterances  longer.  The  offi  cers  used  fewer  silent  pauses,  which  also prevented the professionals from intervening, thereby further pro  longing their utterances.

## 8. Conclusion

The aim of this study was to investigate whether men and women speak differently  when  acting  as  witnesses  in  Swedish  criminal  trials.  Can possible  differences  be  adequately  explained  by  gender  alone  or  are other factors, such as income and level of education, also involved? We also  investigated  the  courtroom  professionals'  speech.  Do  courtroom professionals speak differently depending on gender? Do they speak differently when addressing male and female witnesses?

The material in this study is small and the information on income and level of education is incomplete. The results are therefore inconclusive. They show no statistically  signifi  cant  language  differences  based  on gender, income or education for the parameters investigated. One of the reasons for the lack of differences could be that gender is not very salient in the courtroom context and possibly also in other highly formalised institutional  settings.  In  these  contexts,  the  institutional  roles,  in  this case the role of witness, are so powerful and standardised and include so many requirements and expectations that they overrule gender roles. Therefore, following Reid et al. (2003), these contexts do not produce any  gender-based  language  differences  or  at  least  very  subtle  ones requir  ing a large material to detect them. An infl  uential factor therefore in  stead becomes whether a witness has previous experience from testifying or otherwise is familiar with the courtroom context, i.e. has been in the witness role before. Thus the only signifi  cant differences found were between police offi  cers, for whom witnessing is routine, and civilians, for whom it could be a stressful experience. This shows that the method used in the study can in fact detect language differences. It further suggests that previous courtroom experience, familiarity with the courtroom context and possibly also legal knowledge infl  uence the way witnesses speak to a greater extent than gender, income and level of education.

In  our  opinion,  what  previous  studies  show,  e.g.  Nohara  (1992) and Cameron (1992), is that men and women are affected differently by  different  contexts.  In  some  studies  gender  differences  were  easy to spot, for example in Gunnarsson (1995) and Olevard (1997a) who inve  stigat  ed the academic context. In other studies, for instance in the experimental investigations set up by Dixon and Foster (1997), it was not possible to tie differences to gender but rather to differing con  textual factors. In other words, it is possible to accept the results of studies supporting gender-based language differences without having to agree to men and women speaking differently in  all  situations .  This means that in the courtroom context, we should move away from the difference approach viewing men and women as two polar opposites using language in different ways and instead focus on how gender is constructed within the context according to the dynamic approach. People do not always speak in a certain way because of their gender, but gender is one of the factors that can be salient in determining how people speak.

The trial courtroom, being one of many enormously important institutional contexts to ensure the legal rights of individuals and to sustain our  democracy,  has  not  been  investigated  satisfactorily  in  Sweden. There need to be more and larger studies focusing on the speech of all trial participants taking into account a variety of contextual factors. The Culpepper and Kytö study (2000) nicely shows how quantitative data and contextual information must be combined to get a fuller picture of lan  guage interaction. Regarding witnesses, this could mean taking into ac  count for example whether a witness is testifying for the prosecution or the defence, the witness' dialect or accent, age, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Following the results of this study, one could also ask whether there are any gender differences in the effects on witnesses with previous courtroom experience and familiarity with the context. Another challenge for the future is to investigate how professionals use language  in  interactions  with  defendants,  how  defendants  speak  and what the consequences are for the evaluation of their blameworthiness and ultimately for the outcomes of cases. Research on language use has an important role to play in pointing to and ultimately eliminating prejudices and discrimination in the future.

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