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Y12 Combined group, as promised, that transcript is here:
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Heald English 
no where near as good as the yr 13 combined group!we all know AH loves the tea sessions n cool runnings with us lot!braap!peace our x
You’d expect the barrister, being a person in a position of power in a formal setting like a courtroom, to use formal language, technical legal terms and jargon etc. but this isn’t the case, instead he uses words you’d expect the defendent to use like ‘shopped’which could suggest hes trying to intimidate him by using this colloguial term or he could be trying to make him feel more relaxed by using familiar language, if mr neil feels hes talking on his level he might be more willing to confess to any crime he might have permitted and this could be a ploy by the barrister. The barrister also uses emphasis to demosnstrate to the jury that mr neil is guilty ‘so many times mr neil’ by highlighting how many times hes been visited by the police.
During the cross-examination Mr Neil uses hedging to soften the impact on the judge(s) in court of his crime. Hes uses the adverbs accidentaly and slightly to suggest the action was less drastic than previously mad out. His uses of fillers in this sentence could indicate the thought going into his lexis. The Barrister repeats the end phrase to empahsise to the other people in court the exact words spoken in case the defendant changes his story. The Barrister also repeats one of Mr Neil’s statements ‘you can’t remember whether they came to see you or not’. This either indicates that the defendant is not reliable or he has been visited so many times by the police that he cannot differentiate between different events.
Mr Neill uses different ways to save face. One way is his non commital approach to answering a direct question. By saying he can’t remember the police visiting him it gives him a way out if the police did visit without blatantly lying. In doing this he is flouting the maxim of quantity, as he is not telling the whole truth. Because of the cross examinaiton situation, Mr Neill seems determined not to let the barrister trap him in a corner, defending his face through laughing off leading questions as if they were ridiculous, and not altogether true. However as the Barrister’s accusations get more long winded, the defendant has less oppurtunity to defend himself, simply repeating denials which do not help his case.
Oh blast!
I just wrote a long reply to these very good comments, then somehow lost it. I should practice what I preach and compose comments offline in a word processor, then paste them in.
I’m not going to try and type the whole thing out again, but the key points were:
Luke – a sound overview of the relationship between register and attitude/purpose
Helen – perceptive points on hedging and adverb use to convey modality. Modal verbs are usually a key aspect of this too. Is that the case here?
Kat – excellent observations on facework, and how the two are involved in a battle to ‘expose’ the other’s face to the court while maintaining superficial external formality and civility to each other.
Let’s sort the flout/violate distinction though. I think you got it the wrong way round kat (though otherwise your example is good):
Flout = break the maxim so the audience is aware. Result = irony
Violate = break the maxim without the audience knowing. Result = mislead / failure to cooperate
Here, if the defendant really can’t remember, no maxim has been broken. If he can remember, he is indeed breaking the maxim of quantity, but violating it rather than flouting it, as he does not intend anyone to believe that he really can remember. I hope that makes sense, it seems more difficult to explain in writing than face-to-face.