"This is the first detailed analysis of the language of legal professionals in English jury trial, drawing on the largest and must representative corpus of official trial transcripts ever compiled. Chris Heffer analyses patterns of language use across hundreds of texts and develops a model of legal-lay communication based on strategic tension between narrative and scientific modes of reasoning. As well as providing, descriptive and explanatory accounts of 'legal-lay discourse', the book makes a linguistic case for the survival of the lay jury against growing calls for professionalization."--BOOK JACKET.

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