By applying Multi-Dimensional Analysis, this study has provided a thorough description of the lexico-grammatical characteristics of courtroom discourse to see to what extent it employs both linguistic features of oral registers and literate registers. In particular, this study focuses on language used in the four public sub-registers (opening statements, direct examinations, cross-examinations, closing arguments) of courtroom discourse and analyzes how oral/literate each sub-register is, instead of characterizing courtroom discourse as oral/literate overall. Detailed interpretation of results focuses on Dimension 1 (involved and interactive vs. informational production) and 2 (narrative vs. non-narrative discourse) as these two dimensions are identified as universal parameters of register variation (Biber, 2014). A corpus of high-profile courtroom trials was compiled for this study that includes the O. J. Simpson criminal trial, the Boston Marathon bombing trial, and the Oklahoma bombing trial.

通过运用多维分析，本研究对法庭话语的词汇语法特征进行了详尽的描述，以了解其在多大程度上利用了口头语和文盲的语言特征。本研究尤其关注法庭话语的四个公共子登记簿（开场陈述，直接检查，盘问，结语）中使用的语言，并分析每个子登记簿的口头/识字程度，而不是描述法庭话语的特征。作为整体的口头/识字率。对结果的详细解释着重于维度1（涉及和互动与信息的产生）和维度2（叙事与非叙事的话语），因为这两个维度被确定为寄存器变异的通用参数（Biber，2014年）。