Question Type and Narrative Construction in Courtroom Interrogation

CHOVANCOVÁ, Barbora. Question Type and Narrative Construction in Courtroom Interrogation. In The 6th Conference on Translation, Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics, Poznan (Poland). 2012.

Basic information

• Original name: Question Type and Narrative Construction in Courtroom Interrogation
• Name in Czech: Typy otázek a narativní konstrukce v mluveném soudním diskurzu
• Authors: CHOVANCOVÁ, Barbora (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: The 6th Conference on Translation, Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics, Poznan (Poland), 2012.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60200 6.2 Languages and Literature
• Country of publisher: Poland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14640/12:00063531
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords (in Czech): soudní diskurz; typy otázek
• Keywords in English: courtroom discourse; question types; narrative construction

Abstract

The paper presents the results of research into the patterns of questioning in courtroom interrogation, based on a sample of minor witness testimonies made in court during a high profile civil case in the USA. Approaching the data from the perspective of conversational analysis, the paper concentrates on the question part of the question-answer adjacency pair, contrasting the use of this structural component in direct and cross examination. It is shown that there is a significant difference between the two examination phases concerning the interrogators’ preferences for the individual structural forms of questions (question types). This observation is explained with reference to the different functions of the two types of interrogation, reflecting their role in the construction of contrasting versions of events or, in some cases, the destruction of an alternative account. The same structural form can thus be used in different phases with entirely different functions that are ultimately related to the general macrostructural context of the speech event on the one hand and the questioner’s possible strategies of narrative construction on the other.

Abstract (in Czech)

Příspěvek dokumentuje využívání různých strategií kladení otázek v mluveném právním jazyce z pohledu konverzační analýzy a pragmatiky. Analýza materiálu vede ke zjištění, že totožná strukturní forma může být využívána v různých fázích soudního líčení se zcela odlišnými funkcemi, které vycházejí jednak z celkového makrostrukturního kontextu řečové události a jednak ze strategie, kterou daný mluvčí využívá pro konstrukci vlastního narativního rámce.