Strategies of clarification in judges’ use of language: From the written to the spoken

The present study examines judges’ strategies in clarifying their verbal explanations of constitutional rights to criminal defendants. Nine Superior Court judges of Pima County, Arizona were observed and tape recorded as they presided over taking of guilty pleas, and they were interviewed about their reasons for speaking as they did. Six clarification strategies are identified, and these strategies are compared with other studies of clarification processes and with the properties of simplified registers, particularly speech addressed to first and second language learners.