The Trial of the Expert Witness: Negotiating Credibility in Child Abuse Correspondence

Authors

Catherine F. Schryer, University of Waterloo
Elena Afros, University of Waterloo
Marcellina Mian, Weill Cornell Medical College
Marlee Spafford, University of Waterloo
Lorelei Lingard, University of Toronto

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2009

Journal

Written Communication

Volume

26

Issue

3

First Page

215

Last Page

246

URL with Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0741088308330767

Abstract

This article reports on forensic letters written by physicians specializing in identifying children who have experienced maltreatment. These writers face an extraordinary exigence in that they must provide an opinion as to whether a child has experienced abuse without specifically diagnosing abuse and thus crossing into a legal domain. Their credibility was also at issue because, in this jurisdiction, child abuse identification was not recognized as a medical subspecialty and because the status of expert witnesses is currently being challenged. Through an analysis of 72 forensic letters combined with interview data from six letter writers and five letter readers, we determined that these writers used linguistic and rhetorical strategies that allowed these letters to function as boundary objects or objects that traverse several communities of practice. The most salient strategy was the use of evaluative lexis—adjectives and adverbs which allowed for a range of interpretations and constrained those interpretations at the same time.

Notes

Dr. Lorelei Lingard is currently a faculty member at The University of Western Ontario.