Understanding Aboriginal silence in legal contexts

Abstract

It is now more than 20 years since Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz drew attention to the subtle power of dialectal differences in intercultural misunderstandings. But there is still widespread misrecognition of communication differences between speakers who have quite similar dialects, but different worldviews, and different ways of using the same language. This misrecognition can have serious consequences for participants in intercultural interactions. In this paper we will consider this issue for Aboriginal English speakers in the Australian criminal justice system, particularly in lawyer-client interviews and courtroom examination and cross-examination.