Big City Monkey Business

Abstract:
This presentation examines linguistic analyses conducted in two legal cases involving African American men, variously as plaintiffs or defendants. The first case centers on a civil class-action lawsuit brought by African-born plaintiffs who acquired English as a second language. The plaintiffs alleged a hostile work environment, and the case was litigated with the involvement of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Linguistic evidence in this case focused on patterns of language-based discrimination and alleged differences regarding semantic interpretations.

The second case involves a capital M**der trial in which the defendant—an economically disadvantaged young African American man—elected to represent himself despite facing the death penalty. In this context, linguistic analysis addressed issues of alleged racial bias and pragmatic ambiguity, particularly regarding courtroom actions by judges and prosecutors, raising questions of fairness that resulted in contentious legal outcomes.

In both cases, John Baugh served as an expert witness, employing survey research methods in the criminal case and discourse-analytic approaches in the civil trial to illuminate how language variation and interpretation can influence judicial proceedings.

Speaker Bio:

John Baugh serves Rice University as the Barbara Jordan Distinguished Professor of Linguistics. He is a past president of the Linguistic Society of America and the American Dialect Society. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Linguistic Society of America, and the American Dialect Society. A former fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, he is also the Margaret Bush Wilson Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, and Professor Emeritus of Education and Linguistics at Stanford University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Oracle Education Foundation and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Host or Publisher Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics