56 Discourse and Rape In Drew’s study, the complainant’s version is contested by the defense lawyer’s, and the latter proffers his own version which damages the complainant’s claim of truth. Matoesian (1993, 1995), on the other hand, strongly argues that rape as a domination is reproduced for the second time in the courtroom. This domination happens when defense lawyers cross examine complainants using linguistic strategies that are embedded with patriarchal values. According to Matoesian, the male standard of interpreting the crime of rape is “the standard” observed in the courtroom, and because of this, victim blaming is rampant during the cross examination of defense lawyers. Likewise, Ehrlich (2001) demonstrates the many facets of secondary victimization in her analyses by providing specific instances of discourse in constructing and constituting social realities in rape case trials. Gendered ideological frames such as “utmost physical resistance,” “asymmetry in interaction,” and victim blaming are brought about by the strategic use of grammar of nonagency, questions, and silence by the accused and by the defense lawyer, and by the use of misconstrued communicative signals by the complainants prior to and during the rape incident. The victims of these ideological frames are always the complainants, and the accused is advantaged and goes free of rape charges. These studies (Drew 1992, Matoesian 1993, Ehrlich 2001) draw from varied approaches to discourse such as Conversation Analysis (CA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to present substantial analyses of extracts from rape trials. Drew focuses on general properties of verbal interaction in courtroom settings while Matoesian also draws on the methods of CA combined with the theory of structuration and power. Ehrlich on the other hand draws upon concepts from pragmatics, speech act theory, and feminist legal theory using CDA. Like Ehrlich (2001), the analysis presented here uses theories of pragmatics such as Gricean implicatures and Austin’s and Searle’s speech act theory. According to Cruse (2000 in Cummings 2005, 2), “pragmatics is concerned with aspects of information conveyed through language which are based on the meanings conventionally encoded in the linguistic forms used, taken in conjunction with the context in which the forms are used.” Context and language