turn‐taking, overlap, and the task at hand: ordering speaking turns in legal settings

Abstract

Anthropologists and linguists have often noted the careful sequencing of speaking turns in Western courts, and have posited that overlapping speech in legal contexts is dysfunctional and obstructs the proceedings. Data from panchayats (councils) in India and among Indians in Fiji indicate that these functional arguments may be unfounded when, as in most legal cases, the task at hand is not one of fact‐finding, but rather of the normative evaluation of known facts. The distinction between these disparate tasks is critical for understanding legal processes, which may be distinguished through examination of the degree of sequencing of speaking turns. This narrow point has broader implications regarding the presumption that conversations and other group verbal activities are cooperative undertakings, and may aid in avoiding false comparisons of legal processes, thereby leading to a more general anthropology of law. [legal processes, argument, ethnography of speaking, India, U.S.]