In English courts, the word “respect” is a familiar signal of disagreement. The former President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, has described an advocate who started an answer to his point with the words “My Lord, with the very greatest respect possible.” He left it to his audience to imagine what the advocate thought of the point.
In 2022, linguists from Nottingham Trent University and De Montfort University published a study of the word in court. In two hearings, the barristers David Pannick and James Eadie used “respect,” “respectful” and “respectfully” 230 times between them. The study found that the word is mostly used sincerely, when barristers disagree with judges, so that they do not appear to undermine the judge’s status.