Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons Faculty Scholarship 1-1-1993 In a Different Register: The Pragmatics of Powerlessness in Police Interrogation Janet Ainsworth Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation Janet Ainsworth, In a Different Register: The Pragmatics of Powerlessness in Police Interrogation, 103 YALE L.J. 259 (1993). https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty/287 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Articles In a Different Register: The Pragmatics of Powerlessness in Police Interrogation Janet E. Ainswortht CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................ 260 II. How WE Do THINGS WITH WORDS .............................. 264 A. Performative Speech Acts ................................. 264 B. Indirect Speech Acts as Performatives ......................... 267 C. ConversationalImplicature Modifying Literal Meaning ............. 268 H. GENDER AND LANGUAGE USAGE: A DIFFERENT REGISTER .............. 271 A. Characteristicsof the Female Register ........................ 275 1. Hedges ........................................... 276 2. Tag Questions ...................................... 277 t Associate Professor of Law, University of Puget Sound School of Law. B.A. Brandeis University, M.A. Yale University, J.D. Harvard Law School. My appreciative thanks go to Harriet Capron and Blain Johnson for their able research assistance. I am also indebted to Melinda Branscomb, Jacqueline Charlesworth, Annette Clark, Sid DeLong, Carol Eastman, Joel Handler, Robin Lakoff, Debbie Maranville, Chris Rideout, Kellye Testy, Austin Sarat, and David Skover for their helpful comments and suggestions.