Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the linguistic strategies adopted by six lay witnesses to refer to the source of their information in the context of an Italian criminal trial for murder. Through reference to the source of the information, and through the resulting implicatures, the witnesses aim to present themselves as reliable or unreliable. We particularly focus on the various strategies, both lexical and grammatical, employed by certain witnesses to retract the statements they made during the preliminary investigation and to significantly reduce the quality of their testimony as well as the scope of their claimed knowledge of the crime.