Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- 17 Grammatical Treatises in Early English
- 18 History Writing
- 19 The Language of Religious Texts
- 20 The Language of Courtroom Documents
- 21 Medical and Scientific Writing
- 22 The Language of Newspapers
- 23 ‘Bad Data’: The Case for Early Audio Records
- 24 Ego Documents in the History of English
- 25 Personal Letters in a Community Context
- 26 Women’s Voices in the History of English
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
20 - The Language of Courtroom Documents
from Part III - Genre and Medium in the Record
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2025
By
Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- 17 Grammatical Treatises in Early English
- 18 History Writing
- 19 The Language of Religious Texts
- 20 The Language of Courtroom Documents
- 21 Medical and Scientific Writing
- 22 The Language of Newspapers
- 23 ‘Bad Data’: The Case for Early Audio Records
- 24 Ego Documents in the History of English
- 25 Personal Letters in a Community Context
- 26 Women’s Voices in the History of English
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter examines courtroom documents, focusing on trials and depositions, which offer glimpses of spoken language of the past. Trials written in English, often in the form of questions and answers, are rare before the late sixteenth century. Depositions, the oral testimony of a witness recorded by a scribe prior to trial and used as evidence, become more available in English from the mid sixteenth century. Trials and depositions exist as manuscripts, contemporaneous printed texts and later printed editions, and have recently become accessible through corpora and modern linguistic editions. Manuscripts (already one step beyond the original speech event) are less susceptible to interference by editors, printers and so on, but even these texts should not be treated as verbatim records. Nevertheless, the texts supply valuable data for researchers taking historical pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches and/or examining linguistic variation and change, and in a wide range of other areas.
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- The New Cambridge History of the English LanguageDocumentation, Sources of Data and Modelling, pp. 482 - 505Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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