“What Are You Going to Do with the Village's Knowledge?” Talking Tradition, Talking Law in Hopi Tribal Court

Abstract

Though the details of face-to-face talk and interaction have been studied in Anglo American and British courtrooms, few attempts have been made to extend similar analyses to the study of contemporary indigenous and (post)colonial legal institutions that continue to employ legal processes informed by both Anglo-style adversarial notions of law and ''local'' notions of law, culture, and tradition. Using methods of legal discourse analysis and language ideology studies, this article investigates how interlocutors in a hearing before the courts of the Hopi Indian Nation construct discourses of tradition and Anglo American jurisprudence in multiple and competing ways, and for significant sociopolitical effect. An argument is thus made for attending to the microdetails of sociolegal interactions as an important site for exploring the complex articulations between the contemporary lives of indigenous peoples and the laws with which they are imbricated.

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“…Cantonese courtrooms bristle with moral narratives and performative word plays, all playing a part to undermine the formalistic structure of the old rules. This study therefore echoes the call that Richland (2005, 2008) made in his work on Hopi tribal courts; by studying the ethno‐practices and ideologies that inform people about what to do and how to do it in postcolonial Anglo American–style institutions, researchers can gain unique insights into the complex ways in which these supposedly global legal practices are locally reconstituted. Attending to the dialectics between metapragmatics and pragmatics therefore opens up a new way of understanding the role of language in the legal process, one that is promising in its suggestions of how linguistic practices define relationships between the legal and the social.…”

“…Attention to how language is used and deployed in an institutional activity such as cross‐examination, to echo the view of Richland, makes possible the extension of interaction‐based analyses into (post)colonial sociolegal institutions. By focusing on the details of Anglo American–style juridical practice employed in different societal contexts, this study also compels researchers to recognize and attend to the question of how such practices are refigured through local ideologies and practices (Richland 2005:242).…”

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“…I situate my analysis in the literature that examines the micro‐linguistic processes through which interactions in legal contexts are carried out (e.g., Conley and O'Barr 1992; Mertz ; Richland ). Language is not only a lens through which to examine social and legal processes, but it also functions as a key mediator, “ultimately constructing legal subjects in and outside the courtroom” (Conley , 30; Sarat and Felsiner ).…”

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“…I found the details of this interaction fascinating—and so too the conflict around what custom and tradition demanded, as well as the incommensurability of the views of these differently situated Hopi tribal members trying to work through a very real and difficult legal battle. Most significantly, it revealed a level of complexity and nuance that was underrepresented, if not entirely absent, in the growing literature on the role of custom and tradition in contemporary native American and indigenous governance and political movements (for a more complete analysis of this case, see Richland 2005).…”