(Re)contextualizing compaintants' accounts of sexual assault

Abstract

By comparing data from a sexual assault criminal trial and a sexual assault civil trial, this article shows how counter-hegemonic frameworks can be incorporated into institutional discourse. More specifically, I explore the ways in which feminist discourses or ideological ‘frames’ regarding women and sexual violence can be introduced into the discursive space of a trial, resulting in the contextualizing of complainants’ experiences of sexual assault. The article also illustrates how direct examination can serve to (re)structure and (re)contextualize the testimony given by witnesses in ways which are not typically associated with direct examination questioning strategies. While not an adversarial context, the direct examination of the civil trial analysed here displayed properties of trial discourse more often associated with crossexamination.