An investigation into the language of the courtroom, specifically barrister's persuasive techniques.

My research is an investigation into courtroom language, specifically the persuasive techniques of barristers. The research had three subsections to make a thorough and valid basis from which to draw conclusions from. The first section required me to examine previous criminal court transcripts in order to observe the questioning process and observe the most coercive question types and their linguistic arrangement that encouraged the desired answer from the defendant. Secondly I sent questionnaires to barristers, teachers of the BAR course and criminal law students in order to collect quantitative data about which questions they thought most efficient. Thirdly I examined past research in order to provide a framework of questions which could then be used to examine the first two sub-sections results. The conclusion is that some questions are more coercive and there are in-fact, certain question types that barristers can ask, which linguistically provide only the answer that they desire. This provokes the wider question – should the language of the courtroom be analysed linguistically to be fairer to the public who may have no experience of specific lexis and complex questioning?