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In the domain of forensic linguistics this study investigated the sequences of linguistic behaviour in Italian courtroom (cross) examinations by analysing the influence of the interviewers’ questions on the interviewees’ answers as well as the influence of the respondents’ answers on the subsequent questions formulated by the interviewers. The Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) was utilised, which is a prominent framework for the analysis of linguistic exchanges in social psychology and has captured cross-disciplinary imagination. The major focus of this research has been on the reciprocal influence exerted by the linguistic behaviours enacted by legal professionals, witnesses and defendants. CAT allowed to identify the dominance of convergence or divergence strategies in those specific situations of interaction. Additional insight was provided by a broad discourse analysis approach which highlighted how convergence/divergence strategies in courtroom examinations often contain “adjacency pairs”, following a “preference
psychologically contiguous to divergence strategies.
Resorting to accommodation strategies is a common option also in courtroom interactions; the study of such linguistic exchanges has mainly analyzed the use and the frequency of convergence and divergence techniques in this context. Aronsson, J?nsson, Linell (1987) and Linell(1991)10 analysed 40 criminal trials in Swedish courtrooms and observed that convergence and divergence strategies were frequently used by legal professionals; more specifically, the defendant’s choice to converge or diverge depended on both individual characteristics and membership of different social categories/professional roles (in the authors’ case, lawyer vs. offender). These authors also analysed the accommodation strategy characteristics at the lexical level (information density), and at a more interactional level (strength of initiative and of response), acknowledging their relevance in social context. Levin, Linn (1988), Neiderhoffer and Pennebaker (2002)11 showed that the level of formality of the answers of John Dean, the main witness in the Watergate investigation, accommodated to that of the questions of the senators who examined him during the committee hearings.
Other authors (Gnisci, 2005; Gnisci & Bakeman, 2007)12 conducted a study of courtroom examinations and extended the mentioned findings to the resort to convergence, divergence and maintenance strategies, showing that they occur both at a verbal and non verbal level of interaction.
website (www.radioradicale.it—Speciale Giustizia, Creative Commons Attribute 2.5). The sample includes 148 examinations, whose total duration is 82h 19m, corresponding to 9,741 question-answer exchanges. The examinations were led by 81 legal professionals, 28 prosecutors, 37 defence attorneys and 16 judges; and directed to 87 interviewees, 27 witnesses, 18 defendants, 17 co-defendants, 9 pentiti13 and 16 members of the forces law and order. The defendants were involved in several trials concerning homicides, crimes committed to provide financial support for anarchical and insurrectional groups, closeness to the mafia, mafia crimes and corruption. B. Category Systems
The analysis of the questioning and answering styles was conducted by coding questions and answers according to their degree of coercion and pertinence.
Following the definition given by Woodbury (1984),14 coercion represents the degree to which a question imposes its own version of facts on the answer and conveys a set of implicit and explicit assumptions on behalf of the form of the question. As already mentioned, seven types of questions can be identified, which are, from the most to the less coercive: declaration, tag-questions, yes/no questions, choice, narrow wh-questions, broad wh-questions and indirect questions.
On the other hand, the pertinence of the answer is defined as the degree to which an answer mirrors perfectly, marginally or not at all, what is asked and its implications (Philips, 1984; 1987).15 The corresponding category system includes three categories for pertinent answers, namely pertinent reply, elaborations and implicit answers and one category for non-pertinent answers, including no-reply answers.
C. Observation Procedure and Data Analysis
The observation phase followed two steps: first, all the material was freely observed by the coders, in order to become familiarised with the contents of the trials; subsequently, all the examinations were systematically
observed for coding questions and answers according to their degree of coerciveness and their pertinence respectively. Questions and answers were coded in a sequential way, thanks to the GSEQ software package(Generalised SEquential Querier), which makes it possible to import and analyse observational data in a sequential way, that is, by accounting for the sequence of behavioural occurrence (Bakeman & Quera, 1995).16 Then they were analysed with Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS) for Windows.
Descriptive statistics for categories of questions and answers were obtained. Afterwards, a 7x4 (Question x Answer) and a 4x7 (Answer x Question) Chi Square tests were conducted.17
indirect questions were more frequently asked than choice and broad whquestions.
With regard to the answers, descriptive statistics indicated that pertinent replies are the most frequent answers, followed by elaborations, no-reply and implicit answers.
The Chi square test applied to the linguistic sequence of lawyer’s question-interviewee’s answer was found to be X2(18, N = 8,541) = 171.2, p< .01. The analysis of the adjusted residuals, shown in Table 2, indicated that the more coercive the question was, the more pertinent the answer was. Absolute values greater than |1.96| indicated the presence of an association between one question category and one answer category; the positive sign indicated that the association between the two categories was observed more than it would be expected by chance, whereas the negative sign meant that the categories were associated less than it would be expected by chance. The results printed in Table 2 indicated that pertinent replies significantly followed declarations more frequently to a significant extent, whereas noreplies were significantly less frequent; yes/no questions and tag-questions were followed by pertinent replies and not by no-replies; choice-questions by implicit replies, narrow wh-questions were followed by elaborations, but not by pertinent replies; broad wh-questions by elaborations and implicit replies, and significantly less frequently by pertinent replies; finally, indirect questions were more frequently followed by no-replies and less frequently by pertinent replies.
A chi square test was also applied to verify the presence of an effect of the answer provided by the interviewee on the next question asked by the legal professional. The association between the interviewee’s answer and the subsequent question asked by the lawyer is significant X2(18, N = 8,189)= 106.5, p < .01. Table 3 displayed the results obtained from the analysis of the adjusted residual, which indicated that pertinent replies are more frequently followed by broad wh-questions and less frequently by a declaration; when an elaboration is provided, the more frequently a narrow wh-question follows; when an implicit reply is provided, the more frequently a declaration follows; whereas no replies are followed by declarations or indirect questions and not by narrow or broad wh-questions.
appears to rest mainly on convergence rather than on divergence strategies. Indeed, coercive questions are generally asked to obtain straight answers and the respondents are actually found to provide more pertinent replies when asked coercive questions.
Conversely, respondents are expected to provide broader and less adherent answers when asked open questions (narrow or broad wh-questions and indirect questions). Again, this is the case in the authors’ sample.
On the other hand, an interviewer who has just obtained a pertinent reply is expected to reduce the degree of his/her questioning coercion, acknowledging the availability of the respondent to provide the requested information. The negotiation effort is thus more apparent when longer question/answers sequences are analysed. Indeed, after receiving a pertinent reply, lawyers tend to ask less coercive questions.
One exception is given by the observation that an indirect question follows a no-reply in a non-random way (but less frequently than a declaration). One could argue that after obtaining a no-reply to a question, the interviewer can try to obtain at least some information by asking it in a less direct way, so that the resort to indirect questions can be used as a strategy to achieve the interviewers’ aim indirectly. From a SFL perspective, referring to Halliday’s (1976) notion of cohesion through ellipsis,18 such a strategy aims to obtain relevant information by avoiding explicit reference to the topic in question. These results indicate that, even though courtroom examinations are often characterized by controversial communication and conflicting interests, the main protagonists in the court generally tend to use convergence strategies to reduce the social/role distances among them. In other words, the heteroglossic differences in discourses are gradually (re-)negotiated in favour of a harmonious polyphony aimed at achieving a more functional conduct of the trials.
As regards CAT, the present research confirmed the presence in the courtroom of many accommodation phenomena. The picture could be enlarged if multimodal processes were studied, in addition to the unimodal ones, by using a sequential approach for measuring the effectiveness and the importance of the strategies at stake.
Further, the authors’ study could be a first, introductory step to a prospective line of research that could encourage a productive interaction between CAT and methodological approaches pertaining discourse analysis for a more fine-tuned understanding both of actual linguistic interactions and of the effects of psychosocial variables on interaction, such as the effects of the interlocutor’s perceived social category and/or personality traits on the speaker.
Sequential methods could prove useful to establish whether, how and to what extent these variables (including the degree of reciprocity) can affect the progression of question–answer sequences.
How much interactional behaviour can be explained through the contexts of the situation? How much pertains to personality traits? Insights and tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics and, more specifically, from Critical Discourse Analysis could help to address these still unsolved issues.
psychologically contiguous to divergence strategies.
Resorting to accommodation strategies is a common option also in courtroom interactions; the study of such linguistic exchanges has mainly analyzed the use and the frequency of convergence and divergence techniques in this context. Aronsson, J?nsson, Linell (1987) and Linell(1991)10 analysed 40 criminal trials in Swedish courtrooms and observed that convergence and divergence strategies were frequently used by legal professionals; more specifically, the defendant’s choice to converge or diverge depended on both individual characteristics and membership of different social categories/professional roles (in the authors’ case, lawyer vs. offender). These authors also analysed the accommodation strategy characteristics at the lexical level (information density), and at a more interactional level (strength of initiative and of response), acknowledging their relevance in social context. Levin, Linn (1988), Neiderhoffer and Pennebaker (2002)11 showed that the level of formality of the answers of John Dean, the main witness in the Watergate investigation, accommodated to that of the questions of the senators who examined him during the committee hearings.
Other authors (Gnisci, 2005; Gnisci & Bakeman, 2007)12 conducted a study of courtroom examinations and extended the mentioned findings to the resort to convergence, divergence and maintenance strategies, showing that they occur both at a verbal and non verbal level of interaction.
website (www.radioradicale.it—Speciale Giustizia, Creative Commons Attribute 2.5). The sample includes 148 examinations, whose total duration is 82h 19m, corresponding to 9,741 question-answer exchanges. The examinations were led by 81 legal professionals, 28 prosecutors, 37 defence attorneys and 16 judges; and directed to 87 interviewees, 27 witnesses, 18 defendants, 17 co-defendants, 9 pentiti13 and 16 members of the forces law and order. The defendants were involved in several trials concerning homicides, crimes committed to provide financial support for anarchical and insurrectional groups, closeness to the mafia, mafia crimes and corruption. B. Category Systems
The analysis of the questioning and answering styles was conducted by coding questions and answers according to their degree of coercion and pertinence.
Following the definition given by Woodbury (1984),14 coercion represents the degree to which a question imposes its own version of facts on the answer and conveys a set of implicit and explicit assumptions on behalf of the form of the question. As already mentioned, seven types of questions can be identified, which are, from the most to the less coercive: declaration, tag-questions, yes/no questions, choice, narrow wh-questions, broad wh-questions and indirect questions.
On the other hand, the pertinence of the answer is defined as the degree to which an answer mirrors perfectly, marginally or not at all, what is asked and its implications (Philips, 1984; 1987).15 The corresponding category system includes three categories for pertinent answers, namely pertinent reply, elaborations and implicit answers and one category for non-pertinent answers, including no-reply answers.
C. Observation Procedure and Data Analysis
The observation phase followed two steps: first, all the material was freely observed by the coders, in order to become familiarised with the contents of the trials; subsequently, all the examinations were systematically
observed for coding questions and answers according to their degree of coerciveness and their pertinence respectively. Questions and answers were coded in a sequential way, thanks to the GSEQ software package(Generalised SEquential Querier), which makes it possible to import and analyse observational data in a sequential way, that is, by accounting for the sequence of behavioural occurrence (Bakeman & Quera, 1995).16 Then they were analysed with Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS) for Windows.
Descriptive statistics for categories of questions and answers were obtained. Afterwards, a 7x4 (Question x Answer) and a 4x7 (Answer x Question) Chi Square tests were conducted.17
indirect questions were more frequently asked than choice and broad whquestions.
With regard to the answers, descriptive statistics indicated that pertinent replies are the most frequent answers, followed by elaborations, no-reply and implicit answers.
The Chi square test applied to the linguistic sequence of lawyer’s question-interviewee’s answer was found to be X2(18, N = 8,541) = 171.2, p< .01. The analysis of the adjusted residuals, shown in Table 2, indicated that the more coercive the question was, the more pertinent the answer was. Absolute values greater than |1.96| indicated the presence of an association between one question category and one answer category; the positive sign indicated that the association between the two categories was observed more than it would be expected by chance, whereas the negative sign meant that the categories were associated less than it would be expected by chance. The results printed in Table 2 indicated that pertinent replies significantly followed declarations more frequently to a significant extent, whereas noreplies were significantly less frequent; yes/no questions and tag-questions were followed by pertinent replies and not by no-replies; choice-questions by implicit replies, narrow wh-questions were followed by elaborations, but not by pertinent replies; broad wh-questions by elaborations and implicit replies, and significantly less frequently by pertinent replies; finally, indirect questions were more frequently followed by no-replies and less frequently by pertinent replies.
A chi square test was also applied to verify the presence of an effect of the answer provided by the interviewee on the next question asked by the legal professional. The association between the interviewee’s answer and the subsequent question asked by the lawyer is significant X2(18, N = 8,189)= 106.5, p < .01. Table 3 displayed the results obtained from the analysis of the adjusted residual, which indicated that pertinent replies are more frequently followed by broad wh-questions and less frequently by a declaration; when an elaboration is provided, the more frequently a narrow wh-question follows; when an implicit reply is provided, the more frequently a declaration follows; whereas no replies are followed by declarations or indirect questions and not by narrow or broad wh-questions.
appears to rest mainly on convergence rather than on divergence strategies. Indeed, coercive questions are generally asked to obtain straight answers and the respondents are actually found to provide more pertinent replies when asked coercive questions.
Conversely, respondents are expected to provide broader and less adherent answers when asked open questions (narrow or broad wh-questions and indirect questions). Again, this is the case in the authors’ sample.
On the other hand, an interviewer who has just obtained a pertinent reply is expected to reduce the degree of his/her questioning coercion, acknowledging the availability of the respondent to provide the requested information. The negotiation effort is thus more apparent when longer question/answers sequences are analysed. Indeed, after receiving a pertinent reply, lawyers tend to ask less coercive questions.
One exception is given by the observation that an indirect question follows a no-reply in a non-random way (but less frequently than a declaration). One could argue that after obtaining a no-reply to a question, the interviewer can try to obtain at least some information by asking it in a less direct way, so that the resort to indirect questions can be used as a strategy to achieve the interviewers’ aim indirectly. From a SFL perspective, referring to Halliday’s (1976) notion of cohesion through ellipsis,18 such a strategy aims to obtain relevant information by avoiding explicit reference to the topic in question. These results indicate that, even though courtroom examinations are often characterized by controversial communication and conflicting interests, the main protagonists in the court generally tend to use convergence strategies to reduce the social/role distances among them. In other words, the heteroglossic differences in discourses are gradually (re-)negotiated in favour of a harmonious polyphony aimed at achieving a more functional conduct of the trials.
As regards CAT, the present research confirmed the presence in the courtroom of many accommodation phenomena. The picture could be enlarged if multimodal processes were studied, in addition to the unimodal ones, by using a sequential approach for measuring the effectiveness and the importance of the strategies at stake.
Further, the authors’ study could be a first, introductory step to a prospective line of research that could encourage a productive interaction between CAT and methodological approaches pertaining discourse analysis for a more fine-tuned understanding both of actual linguistic interactions and of the effects of psychosocial variables on interaction, such as the effects of the interlocutor’s perceived social category and/or personality traits on the speaker.
Sequential methods could prove useful to establish whether, how and to what extent these variables (including the degree of reciprocity) can affect the progression of question–answer sequences.
How much interactional behaviour can be explained through the contexts of the situation? How much pertains to personality traits? Insights and tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics and, more specifically, from Critical Discourse Analysis could help to address these still unsolved issues.