Lay People's improvisational practice in a court

Abstract

Based on the observation of one case of the samll claims court, this paper examines the way parties have an argument face to face. I focus on the convivial arguement of lay people, but that may be destructive to the order within small claims court. So at the begining, the judge lead the conversation by using the argumentative standard (benron kihan). But the parties argument gruadually goes on away from the argumentative standard. The relational-orietnted is specific to the parties'talk. The parties are interested in the theme out of the judge's rule-oriented concern, and they instantly borrow and maneuver the discourse within adversarial story when they think that is useful for their own story. Where the parties argue in their usual style, these improvisations you can observe.