Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

It is necessary here, also, to repeat that the movements of the hands and other gestures of the witnesses while making their statements will help much to keep the correct balance. Movements lie much less frequently than words.[1]

[1] Paragraph omitted.

Another means of discovering whether a witness is not seduced by his attitude and his own qualities is the careful observation of the impression his narrative makes on himself. Stricker has controlled the conditions of speech and has observed that so long as he continued to bring clearly described complexes into a causal relation, *satisfactory to him, he could excite his auditors; as soon as he spoke of a relation which *did not satisfy him the attitude of the audience altered. We must invert this observation; we are the auditors of the witness and must observe whether his own causal connections satisfy him. So long as this is the case, we believe him. When it fails to be so he is either lying, or he himself knows that he is not expressing himself as he ought to make us correctly understand what he is talking about.

Section 61. (b) Dialect Forms.

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 <p 294>

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 dear 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 <p 295>

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, heft, stick, clasp, etc.

When foreign words are used it is necessary to observe in what tendency, and what meaning their adoption embodies.[1]

[1] Paragraph omitted.

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 <p 296>

point of view as children. Geiger[1] 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.

[1] Der Ursprung der Sprache. Stuttgart 1869.

Section 62. (c) Incorrect Forms of Expression.

If it is true that by the earnest and repeated study of the meanings of words we are likely to find them in the end containing much deeper sense and content than at the beginning, we are compelled to wonder that people are able to understand each other at all. For if words do not have that meaning which is obvious in their essential denotation, every one who uses them supplies according to his inclination, and status the “deeper and richer sense.” As a matter of fact many more words are used pictorially than we are inclined to think.

Choose at random, and you find surprisingly numerous words with exaggerated denotations. If I say, “I posit the case, I press through, I jump over, the proposition, etc.,” these phrases are all pictures, for I have posited nothing, I have pressed through no obstacle, and have jumped over no object. My words, therefore, have not stood for anything real, but for an image, and it is impossible to determine the remoteness of the latter from the former, or the variety of direction and extent this remoteness may receive from each individual.

Wherever images are made use of, therefore, we must, if we are to know what is meant, first establish how and where the use occurred.

How frequently we hear, e. g., of a “four-cornered” table instead of a square table; a “very average” man, instead of a man who is far below the average. In many cases this false expression is half-consciously made for the purpose of beautifying a request or making it appear more modest. The smoker says: “May I have some light,”

although you know that it is perfectly indifferent whether much or <p 297>

little light is taken from the cigar. “May I have just a little piece of roast,” is said in order to make the request that the other fellow should pass the heavy platter seem more modest. And again: “Please give me a little water,” does not modify the fact that the other fellow must pass the whole water flask, and that it is indifferent to him whether afterwards you take much or little water. So, frequently, we speak of borrowing or lending, without in the remotest thinking of returning. The student says to his comrade, “Lend me a pen, some paper, or some ink,” but he has not at all any intention of giving them back. Similar things are to be discovered in accused or witnesses who think they have not behaved properly, and who then want to exhibit their misconduct in the most favorable light. These beautifications frequently go so far and may be made so skilfully that the correct situation may not be observed for a long time. Habitual usage offers, in this case also, the best examples.

For years uncountable it has been called a cruel job to earn your living honestly and to satisfy the absolute needs of many people by quickly and painlessly slaughtering cattle. But, when somebody, just for the sake of killing time, because of ennui, shoots and martyrs harmless animals, or merely so wounds them that if they are not retrieved they must die terrible deaths, we call it noble sport. I should like to see a demonstration of the difference between killing an ox and shooting a stag. The latter does not require even superior skill, for it is much more difficult to kill an ox swiftly