The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Transcript 7.4 [4/17/11]
Prof.:
Yes, in that situation, okay. In the scenario where the grandfather says,
“I’ll give you money if you stop working.” Then it’s pretty clear that the
stopping of work is given as an inducement for the money, and vice
versa, and the money is given as an inducement for the stopping of work.
That’s that mutual inducement point we’re always talking about when
we’re talking about consideration for bargain () right? We only have
those two questions. Is the thing given a benefit to the promisor or
detriment to the promisee and the- is it given in exchange for the
promisor’s promise and is the promisor’s promise given in exchange for
that benefit or detriment, all right? We always ask those two questions.
Restatement Section 72 puts it black-and-white, straightforward, nice and
simple, all right? Okay. In the actual case, to get back to the actual case,
uh, Ms. B., there’s no question, I guess, that the promise induced the
giving up of the job.
Ms. B.:
Right, that’s what the court says.
Prof.:
That’s what the court says, there’s no question about that. All right. But,
that’s only half the story of this bargain, right?
Ms. B.:
Right.
(There are eight instances of this kind of structure in the extended dialogue, which
consists of 48 pair-parts.) This excerpt is particularly useful because it also dem-
onstrates several other features worth noting. First, we see the occasional poetic
repetition and continuity created by both professor’s and student’s use of
affirmations such as “right” and “yes,” which are peppered throughout the tran-
script.
17
 The excerpt also demonstrates one method by which professors who en-
gage in extended dialogue take some of the pressure off students: although the
dialogue with this student occupied more than half of the class that day, note that
the professor gives her fairly lengthy reprieves while he explicates and fills in blanks.
This particular professor speaks for 82% of the time, meaning that although a great
deal of the students’ class time is spent in extended Socratic dialogues, the students’
total time in dialogue (of any kind) with the professor occupies only 18% of class
time.
18
 In the interstices of the professor’s reaction to the student’s previous turn
and his framing of the subsequent question, as we have seen, we frequently find
substantial commentaries that provide crucial narrative and pedagogical links.
19
If we combine the use of positive affirmations of previous turns, affirmative
backchanneling, and repetitive parallelism at the beginning of professor and stu-
dent turns, we find a very strong supportive frame that provides continuity and
cuing, while incorporating student responses into the larger, ongoing pedagogical
narrative.
20
 In addition, the professor employs an interesting anaphoric structure
that in effect supplies the syntactic-grammatical formulae into which student re-
sponses will fit. For example:

---

150
Difference
Transcript 7.5 [4/17/7, 10]
Prof.:
Okay. And when she says “I’d like to collect on- collect on my gift,”
grandfather’s estate says what?
Ms. B.:
“Lack of consideration.”
Prof.:
[ . . . end of 2.06 turn . . . ]
 Then the case looks more like what, Ms. B.?
Ms. B.:
Hamer.
Prof.:
Yes, that’s right. So, when we ask question number two here, “was the
return promise for performance sought in exchange for the promise for
the money?”, [[Ms. B.: Yes]] your answer would be what?
Ms. B.:
“Yes,” in that situation.
Prof.:
The court says, what?
Ms. B.:
(“The promise was given without consideration.”)
Prof.:
“The promise was given without consideration,” and we know, okay?
that, uh, where there’s no consideration, promises aren’t enforceable,
right?
In these examples, the professor in essence provides the first part of a sentence which
the student completes by replacing the anaphoric cue “what” with the specific
content it indicates. In several cases, the content takes the form of reported speech.
Interestingly, toward the end of the class, Ms. B. attempts to fill in a similar blank,
in this case when the professor pauses, creating a potential ellipsis or zero sign: