Repeats in the courtroom: an analysis of the pragmatic functions of lawyers’ repeats in witness testimonies in the Leonard Peltier trial

Abstract

This qualitative study falls under the scope of Forensic Linguistics, which is the interaction of language and the law. The present research examines lawyer-witness interaction inside the courtroom based on an analysis of transcripts from the Trial of Leonard Peltier. Lawyer-witness interaction has been addressed before from many different perspectives (see, for example, Cotterill 2002; Hale 2004; Shuy 2006; Gibbons 2008; Bolden 2009; Robinson and Kevoe-Feldman, 2010; Eades 2016), but previous research has not discussed the possible pragmatic functions deployed by lawyers when they repeat (partially or fully) the witness’ previous answer when formulating their questions. The corpus of the study consists of 4 witness statements: two Native American youngsters and two Special Agents from the FBI. These statements are contained in ten volumes that add to 1.659 pages. This study analyzes these courtroom interactions with the objectives of identifying and describing the pragmatic functions of lawyers’ repeats in the examination of witnesses, and of giving an account into how these pragmatic functions can be categorized in terms of the identified collaborativeness, neutrality or adversativeness of the questions formulated. This research identified five categories in which repeats can be classified: Confirmation, For the record, Challenging, Focusing, and Clarification. Results show that the most common instances of categories among these witnesses were Confirmation, For the record, and Challenging. Additionally, Confirmation and Focusing had a stronger collaborative character, For the record showed more neutrality, and Challenging and Clarification more adversativeness. The conclusion of this study is that witnesses with a certain amount of status and/or experience in the development of a trial elicit more collaborativeness from the attorneys in their interrogations. Additionally, there are different reasons for each category to be considered more collaborative, neutral or adversative by taking into consideration its purpose and stage of trial in which it occurred.