Language, Law, and Society: Policy Implications of the Kennedy Smith Rape Trial

In this article I examine the applied relevance of trial talk for rape shield legislation and attempts to evaluate the impact of such legal reforms. Using linguistic data from the Kennedy Smith rape trial, I argue that attempts to progressively implement rape shield have thus far failed and that research evaluating its impact has been more or less misguided because reformers and researchers have consistently failed to scrutinize empirically the interactional object to which rape shield legislation is applied: the language of evidence in testimony. Looking at the social construction of rape's legal facticity, I propose new methods of interpreting and evaluating legal reforms based on an understanding of language use and the performance of knowledge in context.