Deceit, distress and false imprisonment: the anatomy of a car sales event

Abstract

We seldom get the opportunity to record what actually goes on in a car sales event. A deaf customer, who kept all the hand-written notes made by the salesperson and himself, provided such evidence in his civil lawsuit against the car dealer. The linguist was called in originally to validate the sequencing of the 101 written slips of paper that constituted such evidence. Using speech event analysis along with various context clues, the sequence of the notes was established. In addition, speech act analysis and topic-response analysis made clear the respective agendas of the customer and the salesperson, since a major part of the dispute concerned whether the customer was a serious, potential buyer or merely a price shopper, seeking information at that time. This article outlines the linguistic analysis that was presented at trial.