This chapter explains the sections of the Act and the principles of common law concerning competence and compellability of witnesses and how evidence can be adduced from witnesses. Adducing evidence, in contrast to admitting evidence, refers to the witness giving evidence in court.

This chapter also discusses certain categories of witnesses who are called to give evidence (complainants in sexual assault and rape cases, children, and people who are cognitively impaired) and the special arrangements that have been introduced to alleviate any disadvantage when such witnesses give evidence. The chapter then focuses on one of the most important aspects of our adversarial system – the proving of facts by having witnesses give oral evidence. In court, witnesses are often examined in three stages: examination-in-chief, cross-examination, and re-examination. The chapter explains the rules pertaining to refreshing memory in and out of court and the rule in Browne v Dunn. Finally, it briefly considers adducing documents and other types of evidence.

In this chapter, we take the perspective of the sociology of language, focusing first on language maintenance and shift in historical settings. We then expand the discussion to include issues of language vitality and of reversing language shift, based on examples for seventeenth-century Dunkirk and twentieth-century Constantinople. A more general perspective of language policy and planning is subsequently developed, including crucial notions such as status planning, corpus planning and language-in-education planning. Examples and case studies are taken from a variety of languages, including Hebrew and Dutch. The Dutch case also serves to illustrate language planning at the level of the nation, and as a function of historical nationalism. The final part of the chapter addresses isssues such as language conflict, the invisibilisation of languages, both in discourse and in practice, and linguistic genocide. We discuss examples from the Habsburg Empire, Belgium, the German–Danish–Frisian area and the Menominee people in Wisconsin.

Tendency and coincidence evidence is a special class of circumstantial evidence. It is used either on its own, or as an adjunct to other forms of evidence for the purpose of showing the accused has/had a tendency to act or think in a certain way or was necessarily involved in a series of events that cannot otherwise be explained. This chapter examines these two categories of evidence and the rules for their admissibility that apply in both civil and criminal proceedings. Part 3.6 of the Act (ss 94–101) regulates and governs the admission of tendency and coincidence evidence.

The chapter will then examine two major thresholds for admission of these types of evidence. First, the evidence must have ‘significant probative value’. This concept is connected to the test of relevance in s 55. Second, where the prosecution is adducing the evidence in criminal proceedings, it must satisfy the additional hurdle of s 101(2): the ‘probative value of the evidence substantially outweighs any prejudicial effect it may have on the defendant’. Finally, the chapter will consider the circumstances where such evidence is admitted for a purpose other than proving tendency or coincidence.

In this chapter, we focus on the meso- and micro-levels of social organisation, below the macro-levels discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. We first discuss social network theory, including crucial concepts such as ties, density and multiplexity, and explain the relationship with innovation diffusion and norm enforcement. We then explore to what extent social network theory can be applied to historical situations, distinguishing between functional and emotional ties. Examples and case studies of historical network studies are taken from English and Afrikaans. The chapter also discusses related models such as coalitions and communities, in particular, communities of practice, text communities and discourse communities. The final part of the chapter addresses individual variation and style shifting on the basis of examples from English and German data.

This chapter explains the sections of the Act and the common law principles governing the admission of opinion evidence. Critical to understanding the opinion rule is understanding what an ‘opinion’ is: this triggers the application of the rules on the exclusion or admission of such evidence.

The regulation of opinion evidence under pt 3.3 (ss 76–80) is relatively simple. Nonetheless, these rules have raised subtle problems in practice. Because of its inferential nature, opinion evidence is, in principle, excluded by s 76. However, exceptions are set out in ss 77–9.

This chapter thus explains opinion evidence, the exclusion of opinion evidence, the exceptional admission of opinion evidence and the scope of application of the opinion rule. In order to be admissible, an opinion must rationally affect, either directly or indirectly, the probability of a fact in issue in the proceedings, thus satisfying the requirements of s 55.

In this chapter, we elaborate on the sociolinguistic theory introduced in Chapter 1, focusing on variationist approaches that correlate language and society. We introduce the theory of language change developed by Weinreich et al. (1968), which encompasses the contraints problem, the transition problem, the embedding problem, the evaluation problem and the actuation problem. We then discuss social macro-categories such as social rank, gender, age and generations, arguing that detailed sociohistorical evidence is needed for establishing these categories in order to prevent an anachronistic approach to sociolinguistic history. Literacy, education and writing experience are discussed as highly relevant social factors for the sociolinguistic analysis of linguistic history. Case studies are taken from French and Dutch. The chapter ends by describing the variationist approach as the first of three waves of sociolinguistics.

This chapter introduces the theory of sociolinguistics using concepts such as variation, inherent variability, social meaning, real and apparent time, and the S-curve. We argue for the importance of a sociolinguistic approach to language history, and introduce key concepts used in historical sociolinguistics such as literacy and the bad data problem. We also dicuss the need for sociohistorical baseline evidence to reconstruct social orders and hierarchies in the past. Two case studies are discussed, which illustrate the applicability of sociolinguistic theories and methods to historical data by demonstrating the social embedding of ongoing changes in historical English, and the role of social mobility and social aspirers in these changes.

This chapter first discusses to what extent we can find attitudes in historical contexts. Whereas explicit attitudes can be culled from metalinguistic texts, implicit attitudes may be reconstructed on the basis of variation in language use, for example, in the use of pronouns versus full noun phrases. Such discursive patterns are signs of indexicality, which can be seen as the linguistic form of more intangible language ideologies. The chapter then introduces main concepts from language ideological theory, such as erasure and iconisation. Distinguishing between language myths and language ideologies, we discuss a range of examples, such as the myth of polite language and the standard language ideology. A number of case studies, including purism in the German metalinguistic tradition, linguistic debates about antiquity and ethnicity in Early Modern Spain, and the establishment of Luxembourgish as a national language, are used to further illustrate key concepts and approaches.

Traditional language histories have often focused narrowly on formal printed texts, produced by educated elite men from urban social elites, largely neglecting the everyday language practices of ordinary people. This chapter introduces the perspective of language history from below, where we shift our focus to these often-overlooked voices, in order to arrive at a fuller and more complete understanding of historical language variation and change. We discuss the challenges faced by investigations of the everyday language of ordinary people, including difficulties in determining actual authorship and interpreting texts produced through delegated writing. Based on case studies and examples from a range of different historical and linguistic contexts, we show how examining ego-documents such as private letters and diaries from lower social ranks can reveal valuable insights and complement and at times even correct our existing view of language histories.

This chapter explains the rule against hearsay and its exceptions. First, it sets out what hearsay is and some of the common law cases that contributed to its development. It then explains how hearsay is defined under the Act. This chapter then proceeds to explain the various uses for which evidence may be adduced and the different exceptions available under the Act. It is important to note that facts in issue and facts relevant to facts in issue are critical to understanding the purposes behind tendering hearsay evidence.

Hearsay evidence relies not on direct witness testimony but on another witness’s statement about a ‘previous representation’. The person who makes the out-of-court assertion is called the ‘declarant’ or maker of the statement. The rationale for developing the rule against hearsay at common law was that these out-of-court previous representations were usually made by a person whose evidence was not available to be tested. The main concern at common law was whether such evidence was reliable. The witness giving the hearsay evidence could be cross-examined about what they perceived, but the credibility of the maker of the statement could not be tested.