Final Project Milestone One- Topic and Setting Submission
Jason Wilkerson
SNHU
Cognitive Processes
Dr King
May 10, 2015
Language, which can be viewed as a system with a clear hierarchical structure that enables communication within a group of speakers, is among the most interesting concepts in Psychology. In this regard, it is among the most explored areas in cognitive psychology across a variety of fields. However, there is one contemporary problem in relation to this area of focus that could be subjected to further research that can be applied in the field of Law.
The contemporary problem related to Language within the field of psychology is in regards to witnesses in the court of law whereby language is approached with the notion that it may impact and influence a witness’s testimony in the court of law. This is mainly as a result of its ability to control a variety of different cognitive skills such as; the way people articulate occurrence of events, think, and tend to remember (Carroll, 2007). For instance, while articulating an occurrence of an event, different types of languages tend to differ in their perception of time and space (Sharpe, 2009). For example, a witness in a court of law may be trying to explain to the court where a particular crime took place. In this regard, there are languages that will quote the essence of time and others such as Indonesian that does not even explain whether the event has already taken place. As a result, this may distort a witness testimony thereby making it insignificant in regards to a particular case.
Additionally, Language also tends to influence on how well an individual can remember the manifestation of an event as it occurred. In harmony with Wagner (2006), this is mainly lucid as some of the languages such as English use transitive constructions whereby speakers phrase things in terms of people doing things unlike others such as Spanish. As a result, this may have crucial consequences for eyewitness memory since all events in the court of law require a clear explanation of what happened. Therefore, speakers of languages such as Spanish may have a hard time trying to recall who did what due to their inability to use transitive contracts in their language.
Lastly but not the least, language also tends to influence the way we think thus different languages automatically generates different thoughts around various settings. According to Lund (2014), this is mainly attributed to the fact that, the way people think influences the way they speak and the way they speak influences the way they think. As a result, speakers of multiple languages are undoubtedly better at expressing their thoughts than speakers of a single language. For instance, an eyewitness who is a bilingual can describe the occurrence of an event in the court of law than a one-language speaking persons who may lack words to express and interpret his thoughts at one time or the other.
For this reason, I would recommend the following research questions to be explored in relation to this study.
- xplain.
- Are multi-lingual witnesses advantaged while giving testimonies in the court of law? And if so what attributes kind of attributes gives them the upper hand?
- What strategies can the court of law employ to ensure that the eyewitness’ testimonies are not distorted or misinterpreted due to language?
References
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Carroll, D. W. (2007). Psychology of language. Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth.
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Lund, N. (2014). Language and thought. London: Routledge.
Wagner, A. (2006). Legal language and the search for clarity: Practice and tools. Bern: Lang.
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Sharpe, P. (2009). Language: The big picture. London: Continuum.
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