What every criminal lawyer must unconditionally know is the dialect of
those people he has most to deal with. This is so important that I
should hold it conscienceless to engage in the profession of criminology
without knowing the dialects. Nobody with experience would dispute my
assertion that nothing is the cause of so great and so serious
misunderstandings, of even inversions of justice, as ignorance of
dialects, ignorance of the manner of expression of human groups. Wrongs
so caused can never be rectified because their primary falsehood starts
in the protocol, where no denial, no dispute and redefinition can change
them.
It is no great difficulty to learn dialects, if only one is not seduced
by comic pride and foolish ignorance of his own advantage into believing
that popular speech is something low or common. Dialect has as many
rights as literary language, is as living and interesting an organism as
the most developed form of expression. Once the interest in dialect is
awakened, all that is required is the learning of a number of meanings.
Otherwise, there are no difficulties, for the form of speech of the real
peasant (and this is true all over the world), is always the simplest,
the most natural, and the briefest. Tricks, difficult construction,
circumlocutions are unknown to the peasant, and if he is only left to
himself he makes everything definite, clear, and easily intelligible.
There are many more difficulties in the forms of expression of the
uncultivated city man, who has snapped up a number of uncomprehended
phrases and tries to make use of them because of their suppositious
beauty, regardless of their fitness. Unpleasant as it is to hear such a
screwed and twisted series of phrases, without beginning and without
end, it is equally difficult to get a clear notion of what the man
wanted to say, and especially whether the phrases used were really
brought out with some purpose or simply for the sake of showing off,
because they sound “educated.”
In this direction nothing is more significant than the use of the
imperfect in countries where its use is not customary and where as a
rule only the perfect is used; not “I was going,” but “I have gone”
(went). In part the reading of newspapers, but partly also the
unfortunate habit of our school teachers, compel children to the use of
the imperfect, which has not an iota more justification than the
perfect, and which people make use of under certain circumstances, i.e.,
when they are talking to educated people, and then only before they have
reached a certain age.
I confess that I regularly mistrust a witness who makes use of an
imperfect or some other form not habitual to him. I presuppose that he
is a weak-minded person who has allowed himself to be persuaded; I
believe that he is not altogether reliable because he permits untrue
forms to express his meaning, and I fear that he neglects the content
for the sake of the form. The simple person who quietly and without
shame makes use of his natural dialect, supplies no ground for mistrust.
There are a few traits of usage which must always be watched. First of
all, all dialects are in certain directions poorer than the literary
language. E. g., they make use of fewer colors. The blue grape, the red
wine, may be indicated by the word black, the light wine by the word
white. Literary language has adopted the last term from dialect. Nobody
says water-colored or yellow wine, although nobody has ever yet seen
white wine. Similarly, no peasant says a “brown dog,” a “brown-yellow
cow”--these colors are always denoted by the word red. This is important
in the description of clothes. There is, however, no contradiction
between this trait and the fact that the dialect may be rich in terms
denoting objects that may be very useful, e.g. the handle of a tool may
be called handle, grasp, haft, stick, clasp, etc.
When foreign words are used it is necessary to observe in what tendency,
and what meaning their adoption embodies.[244]
The great difficulty of getting uneducated people to give their
testimony in direct discourse is remarkable. You might ask for the words
of the speaker ten times and you always hear, “He told me, I should
enter,” you never hear “He told me, ‘Go in.’” This is to be explained by
the fact, already mentioned, that people bear in mind only the meaning
of what they have heard. When the question of the actual words is
raised, the sole way to conquer this disagreeable tendency is to develop
dialogue and to say to the witness, “Now you are A and I am B; how did
it happen?” But even this device may fail, and when you finally do
compel direct quotation, you can not be certain of its reliability, for
it was too extraordinary for the witness to quote directly, and the
extraordinary and unhabitual is always unsafe.
What especially wants consideration in the real peasant is his silence.
I do not know whether the reasons for the silence of the countrymen all
the world over have ever been sought, but a gossiping peasant is rare to
find. This trait is unfortunately exhibited in the latter’s failure to
defend himself when we make use of energetic investigation. It is said
that not to defend yourself is to show courage, and this may, indeed, be
a kind of nobility, a disgust at the accusation, or certainty of
innocence, but frequently it is mere incapacity to speak, and
inexperienced judges may regard it as an expression of cunning or
conviction. It is wise therefore, in this connection, not to be in too
great a hurry, and to seek to understand clearly the nature of the
silent person. If we become convinced that the latter is by nature
uncommunicative, we must not wonder that he does not speak, even when
words appear to be quite necessary.
In certain cases uneducated people must be studied from the same point
of view as children. Geiger[245] speaks of a child who knew only one
boy, and all the other boys were Otho to him because this first boy was
called Otho. So the recruit at the Rhine believed that in his country
the Rhine was called Donau. The child and the uneducated person can not
subordinate things under higher concepts. Every painted square might be
a bon-bon, and every painted circle a plate. New things receive the
names of old ones. And frequently the skill of the criminalists consists
in deriving important material from apparently worthless statements, by
way of discovering the proper significance of simple, inartistic, but in
most cases excellently definitive images. It is of course self-evident
that one must absolutely refrain from trickery.