Small claims court as a field site for urban sociolinguistics
Bambi B. Schieffelin (New York University)
Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer (New York University)
Many people find themselves in small claims court to argue about matters that affect their lives. In this workshop, we look at their language use as a ressource for sociolinguistics. We will introduce participants to a fieldsite that provides a solution to some of the methodological obstacles presented by linguistically diverse urban settings. As a public space where local residents come to resolve disputes, small claims court provides sociolinguists with an opportunity to study "naturally occuring" speech that represents the range of varieties found in the community. Small claims proceedings are less formal than regular trials, and a typical interaction consists in large part of stretches of dialogue between a legal professional and a lay litigant. As a consequence, data collected in small claims court is in many ways parallel to data from sociolinguistic interviews, but it is at the same time socially situated in the context of the legal setting and of the socioeconomics of intergroup relationships.
Having collected data in small claims court as a teacher supervising class projects and as a researcher investigating issues of multilingualism, we will address practical issues of obtaining consent for fieldwork in court, and we will draw on our recordings to illustrate some of the different types of analyses that one can do with these data, ranging from discourse analysis to variationist sociolinguistics. The linguistic phenomena that can be investigated include among others narratives, style-shifting, code-switching, speech accommodation/audience design, talk-in-interaction, and metalinguistic commentary.
While the analysis is generally limited to the interactional event itself, the characteristics of the event enable linguists to address larger social issues regarding the relationship between individual and institution and between speakers of different linguistic varieties. For example, one may investigate the tension between the requirements of the law and variation in individuals. narrative practices (cf. Conley and O'Barr's "rules and relationship" model), or the ways in which socioeconomic differences between parties correlate with the use of different linguistic varieties (e.g. drawing on disputes between tenants and their landlords, or workers and their employers). Thus, we will explore in discussion with participants how such research enables linguists to investigate and address the role language plays in the establishment and maintenance of social inequality.
