The Kercher/Knox trial: Accommodation Strategies in bi-lingual setting

In the domain of forensic linguistics, this study investigated Meredith Kercher murder multi-stage process – a case which caught the attention of public opinion both in Italy and abroad. The Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) was utilized for a deeper understanding of these trial interactions. CAT (Giles et al. 1973, 2006; Coupland & Jaworski 1997; Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991) is a longstanding and perhaps the most prominent framework in the domain of the social psychology of language and has captured cross-disciplinary interests. CAT was initially developed as Speech Accommodation Theory ( Giles et al. 1973), whose key notion was that during interactions people often modify their speech features (accent, dialect, pauses, register) to achieve various goals. Interlocutors may pursue “accommodative” aims, such as seeking the other’s social approval, by signaling belongingness to the same ethnic or socioeconomic group. Instead, non-accommodative motivations are dominating when social distance and even disapproval are emphasized (Street et al. 1982). CAT assumption is that interlocutors’ communicative modes display social markers which convey information about their personal and social identities through both verbal and nonverbal (e.g. prossemics, dress and hair styles) cues. In a forensic linguistic perspective, in courtroom cross-examinations credibility and positive Face-values are at stake. During trials, interactants use mainly linguistic convergent and/or divergent and/or maintenance strategies in orchestrating the sequential accommodation of their interventions. Our study aimed at analyzing qualitative samples from different phases of the long lasting Amanda Knox trial by considering four steps exchanges (question-answer-question-answer or answer-question-answer-question). In particular, we evaluated the cohesion between the coerciveness of the prosecutor’s questions and the pertinence of Amanda’s answers. One significant aspect of such exchanges was the presence of an interpreter, which brought about an additional (meta-)communicative dimension. We illustrated the prosecutors’ and Amanda’s strategies also in their interplay with the bi-lingual/language switching setting of the trial