The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

party against ().” “Accordance with a real or apparent intention.” What do
you make of that?
In each of these two excerpts, the professor reminds the student of the parts of the
legal test to be applied, in the first instance putting the parts of the test in the form
of questions that the student is to ask herself (see Chapter 4). By doing this, the
professor constructs a strong discursive framework that allows the student to sim-
ply fill in the blank by applying the legal categories to the facts of the case at hand
as she moves through the narrative segments he sets up.
In addition to creating a coherent narrative thread that moves the discussion
through relatively clear, semantically delineated segments, the professor’s questions
also guide the student’s responses in terms of form, creating a fairly smooth give-
and-take. (This is arguably the point at which the professor-student pair-part
structure comes closest to achieving a “monologue in adjacency pair form.”) For
example, a number of the professor’s turns begin with repetition of some part of
the student’s previous utterance, creating the kinds of discursive links that have
been noted in trial talk:
14
Transcript 7.3 [4/17/7–14]:
Turn 62/Ms. B.:
Lack of consideration.
T. 63/Prof.:
It was lack of consideration, okay. . . .
T. 90/Ms. B.:
I’d say “yes.”
T. 92/Prof.:
You’d say “yes.”
T. 96/Ms. B:
Hamer.
T. 97/Prof.:
Looks like 
Hamer
, right.

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148
Difference
T. 98/Ms. B.:
That she has to give up her job in order to get the money.
T. 99/Prof.:
She has to give up her job in order to get the money.
T. 100/Ms. B.:
Yes.
T. 101/Prof.:
Yes, that’s right.
T. 104/Ms. B.:
Right, that’s what the court says.
T. 105/Prof.:
That’s what the court says, there’s no question about that. All
right.
T. 110/Prof.:
But, what is this that we can’t say?
T. 111/Ms. B.:
That the return promise was sought for by the granddaughter.
T. 112/Prof.:
We can’t say that the return promise, “Yes, I’ll give up my job,”
was sought for in exchange for the gift.
T. 117/Ms. B.:
What was promised.
T. 118/Prof.:
What was promised.
T. 121/Ms. B.:
The two thousand dollars.
T. 122/Prof.:
The two thousand dollars.
T. 127/Ms. B.:
[ . . . ]
 and that’s on the grounds of equitable estoppel-
T. 128/Prof.:
Equitable estoppel, uh huh 
[ . . . ]
T. 133/Ms. B.:
[ . . . ]
 from not fulfilling the promise.
T. 134/Prof.:
Estopped from not fulfilling the promise.
T. 148/Ms. B.:
No, he didn’t even know the situation.
T. 149/Prof.:
Right, didn’t know the situation, so 
[ . . . ]
T. 152/Ms. B.:
Apparent (intention).
T. 153/Prof.:
Or apparent intention. What do you make of that?
T. 154/Ms. B.:
Well, then you could- you could argue that the employer had an
apparent intention.
T. 155/Prof.:
Well, now, why could you argue that?
The use of parallel repetition in these question-answer sequences builds a sense of
semantic cohesion across the two speakers’ utterances, contributing to a sense of
narrative continuity.
15
 It also contributes to a poetic coordination of the partici-
pants’ speech rhythms just at the point of transition, again promoting a sense of
continuity. Scholars studying this kind of patterning have also pointed to its util-
ity in aiding audience comprehension, surely as much an asset with large classes as
with juries.
16
 (The modified Socratic classrooms ranged from 98 to 115 students.)

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Professorial Style in Context
149
The professor at times also induces a similar connective poetic structure be-
tween question and answer by using framing tag questions to induce parallel re-
sponses (copy) from the student: