Representation of threatening speech in Late Modern English trials

Abstract

When spoken threats are brought to court, one of the challenges judges and juries face is that they must decide on the legal relevance of a speech act which is usually not available as physical evidence. Instead, witnesses must resort to verbal re-enactments of the alleged threat, e.g. through the use of speech act labels and speech descriptors. This provides scholars with a unique opportunity to investigate laypersons' understandings of what constitutes a ‘proper’ threat. Using a set of trial accounts published in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey between 1837 and 1913, I analyse the metapragmatic expressions witnesses employ to represent and describe threatening speech when giving testimony during trials related to threatening behaviour and extortion. I then compare these first-order conceptualisations of threats with definitions by legal professionals and scholarly work on speech act analysis. The study shows that laypersons in the Late Modern English courtroom use metapragmatic expressions not only to report the occurrence of an illegal speech act but also to express their attitude towards disruptions of the social order.