A pragmalinguistic analysis of courtroom interrogation in a multilingual context

• Main Author: Santos, Minda V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2004
• Subjects: Preliminary examinations (Administrative procedure); Pragmatics; Examination of witnesses; Court proceeding; Applied Linguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/54; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/1053/viewcontent/CDTG003783_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The paper is a pragmalinguistic analysis of the triadic verbal exchanges among the lawyers, the witness and the court interpreters during courtroom interrogation in a multilingual context, particularly at the 9th Judicial Regional Trial Courts (Branches 14, 15, 16 and 17), Zamboanga City. The corpus of the study consisted of audio-recordings of courtroom questions asked by the lawyers and the answers given by the witnesses during the trial of the 13 different criminal cases. The question-answer sequences were transcribed, analyzed, categorized, quantified, and their percentile equivalence were computed based on the following research questions: (1) How can the linguistic structures of questions asked by the prosecution and the defense lawyers and interpreted by the interpreter in the courtrooms be described in terms of the following lexicosemantic and syntactic structures: (a) Lexico-semantic choice particularly the modal auxiliaries (can and could interpreted either as pwede ba, pabor in Chavacano or mahimu ba in Cebuano) and nominals of address (Mr./Miss Witness, Sir or Madam or its shortened form mam, and (b) Syntactic forms of questions (i.e., WH-questions, Bi-polar questions, and Open-ended questions?, (2) How is the pattern of questioning (inductive or deductive) conducted by the prosecution lawyer during the direct examination similar to or different from the cross examination by the defense lawyer with respect to the following sequential levels of questioning: preliminary questions (PQs), information-checking questions (ICQs), and evidence-validating questions (EVQs), (3) What questioning strategies: indirect speech acts (ISAs) and declaratives without tags (DWOTs predominate the courtroom interrogation as mediated by the court interpreter in terms of the following discourse functions: defense-constructing and blame implicating?, and (4) What interpretative strategies are used by the court interpreters to convey the lawyers questions and the witness answers? The study found that the modal auxiliaries Can and Could interpreted either as pabor, pwede ba and mahimu ba in the local language were used either as a softening device or as an indirect request. Both modal auxiliaries pervaded during the direct examination, whereas the nominals of address were employed in almost the same number of times by both the prosecution and the defense lawyers. Of the three question types, Wh-questions predominated the direct examination, followed by Bi-polar questions. On the other hand, both the prosecution and the defense lawyers rarely used Open-ended questions. The results of the study also show that the respective lawyers used the sequential levels of questioning to develop a version of a story that favored their respective ends. In terms of the questioning strategies, namely, indirect speech acts (ISAs) and declaratives without tags (DWOTs), the defense lawyer exploited both during the cross-examination. The court interpreters employed repetition (RE) and/or reformulation (RF) when they interpreted the lawyers questions and the witnesses answers when an exact interpretation was not possible.