Insincerity in lawyers’ questioning strategies in Malawian criminal courtroom discourse

IF 0.8 3区 文学 Q3 COMMUNICATION Text & Talk Pub Date : 2023-12-12 DOI:10.1515/text-2022-0083
Wellman Kondowe
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Abstract

This paper introduces a new perspective on analysing courtroom insincerity by focusing on questions asked by lawyers in the Malawi criminal justice system. The study aimed at examining the linguistic tools of tracing insincerity in lawyers’ questions; the varying degrees of insincerity in defence and prosecution lawyers and their rationale for making such choices. The study argues that courtroom setting is a war zone where different parties have divergent goals. Such encounters are much likely to yield higher chances of insincerity, which can be manifested in the questions lawyers ask. The analysis is based on data from four criminal cases, which were collected from the High Court of Malawi. My framework of analysing insincerity in questions examines the prescribed degrees of control that questions exert on the witnesses in relation to their productiveness. The findings indicate that, when examining witnesses, prosecutors exercise less insincerity while defence lawyers opt for questions with high insincerity. These imbalances in language use are enshrined in and supported by law in its statutes. The findings of this study have jurisprudential implications, especially in Africa which is internationally less represented in the studies of language and law.
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马拉维刑事法庭话语中律师提问策略的不诚实之处
本文通过关注马拉维刑事司法系统中律师提出的问题,引入了分析法庭不诚实问题的新视角。本研究旨在探讨从律师提问中追溯不诚实的语言工具;辩方和控方律师不同程度的不诚实以及他们做出这种选择的理由。研究认为,法庭环境是各方目标不一致的战场。在这种情况下,律师提问时不真诚的几率会更高。本分析基于从马拉维高等法院收集的四起刑事案件的数据。我分析问题不诚实的框架研究了问题对证人的控制程度与证人的工作效率之间的关系。研究结果表明,在询问证人时,检察官较少使用不诚实的问题,而辩护律师则选择使用不诚实程度较高的问题。这些语言使用上的不平衡在法律条文中得到了体现和支持。本研究的结果具有法学意义,尤其是在非洲,因为国际上对语言和法律的研究较少。
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来源期刊
Text & Talk
Text & Talk Multiple-
CiteScore
1.70
自引率
16.70%
发文量
70
期刊介绍: Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.
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