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Understanding Aboriginal silence in legal contexts 293

nipulation of witness silence. In some instances defence counsel allowed little
time between asking an initial question and following it up with pressured, often
shouting, repetition of the verb phrase, as we see in Turn 5 of Example 2 above.
In such examples we can see that the witness is given little chance to think about
the question, or to use the lengthy silence which characterizes many Aboriginal
conversations, and particularly interviews with Aboriginal people.
But there are a number of silences throughout the hearing. While the focus
here is on witness silence in answer to a lawyer question, it is interesting to note
the cross-examining lawyers’ use of silence within a clause, seemingly for em-
phasis (in Example 2 Turn 1, Example 3 Turn 1, and Example 4 Turn 10). The
lawyer silence in Example 2 Turn 3 is quite possibly caused by a memory lapse,
as he remembers the boys’ surname for sarcastic effect.
Consistent with the widespread Aboriginal use of silence at the beginning of
an answer, we find silences of more than one second prefacing all of the witness
answers in Example 2 and Example 3, as well as one of the answers in Example 4
(in Turn 11). But a number of other witness silences in answer to questions in
these examples are not followed by witness answers. While these occurrences of
silence might perhaps be seen as evidence that the legal system is accommodat-
ing Aboriginal ways of speaking, both defence counsel made sure, in two ways,
that this is not how these silences would be interpreted. Firstly, such silences
were invariably followed by some form of harassment as in Turn 3 of Example 2
above. And secondly, on at least two occasions defence counsel exploited the
Aboriginal tendency to use gratuitous concurrence to get the witness to agree
overtly to the proposition that his silence should be interpreted negatively, as we
see below in Example 4, excerpted from the cross-examination of Albert by the
second (less aggressive) defence counsel:

(4)
1. DC2: And you told them lies to their faces, didn’t you? (3.7) Didn’t you Al-
bert? (3.7) Didn’t you Albert? (2.2) You lied in their face, didn’t you?
(3.6) Albert, answer my question, please=
2. W: =I don’t wanna.

3. DC2: Well I’m sorry, but this isn’t one that you can claim privilege on.
4. W: I don’t wanna.

5. DC2: Pardon?
6. W: I don’t wanna.

7. DC2: You don’t want to answer?=

8. M: =Well, I’m telling you, Albert, you have to answer this question,
okay? You can’t get out of this [one.