A Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Courtroom Questions in a Multilingual Context

 2
Toward this end, he emphasizes that its effectiveness depends on the craft, logic and 
psychological insight of the interrogator in interpreting the information relevant to the case. 
In the Philippine setting, the language used during the courtroom proceedings (both 
national and regional) is English.  In fact, during the trial of a case, the participants are, as it 
were, uprooted from their natural and informal speech community to participate in a formal and 
highly conventionalized speech event that aims at communicating the evidence.  As such, the 
interaction in an institutional setting like the Regional Trial Courts, the language used is English 
which is the language used by the educated Filipinos.   
However, cognizant of the unique setting of the different regions where the diverse 
ethnolinguistic groups speak their respective regional language, Article XIV, Section 7 of the 
1987 Philippine Constitution provides that, “for the purpose of communication and instruction 
the official languages of the Filipino people are Filipino and until otherwise provided by law, 
English” (p. 439).  It further states, that “the constitution takes into account that not all people in 
a region speak or understand Filipino or English.”  Hence, the use of  “regional languages will 
facilitate communication” (p. 438) as the constitution mandates that every Filipino must not be 
deprived of his/her right to testify in his/her language.   
For this reason, in the Regional Trial Courts, the court interpreter facilitates the 
communication between the witness who uses the native language and the lawyer who uses 
English during the courtroom proceedings.  It is also noteworthy to mention that the lawyer’s 
questions are always interpreted by the interpreter in the language of the witness. The 
prerogative of the witness to use his/her language during the entire interrogation is expressed 
before the interrogation usually starts.  The court interpreter usually asks the witness if he/she 
could understand the English language.  If the witness responds negatively, then, the interpreter 
 3
asks him/her which language to use and the language preferred by the witness will be used 
during the entire interrogation.  This means that even if the lawyer uses and understands the 
language of the witness, the interpreter still needs to interpret the witness’ answer to his/her 
question.  Hence, in a judicial setting, a witness who is not proficient in the use of the English 
language is allowed to interact with the lawyers and the judge through the court interpreter 
during the pre-trial activities using the language preference.  Thus, in a multilingual setting like 
Zamboanga City where most of the litigants cannot speak the English language, the court 
interpreter’s role is crucial. 
Interestingly, the locus of the present study is the 9
th
 Judicial Regional Trial Courts in 
Zamboanga City where almost always, lawyers conduct the courtroom interrogation with the aid 
of a court interpreter principally because a majority of the witnesses are Chavacano, Cebuano, 
Pilipino or Tausug speakers.  This could be attributed to the strategic location of Zamboanga 
City.  The city is located at the southernmost tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula and within the 
southwestern Mindanao region.  It is bounded in the north by the provinces of Zamboanga del 
Norte and Zamboanga del Sur, in the east, by the Moro Gulf, in the south by Basilan Strait and 
Celebes Sea, and in the west by the Sulu Sea.  The territorial jurisdiction of the city includes the 
islands of Great Sta. Cruz and Little Sta. Cruz, the islands of Tictabon, Sacol, Manalipa, 
Tumalutap, Vitali, and other numerous smaller islands.  The people from the surrounding cities, 
namely, Pagadian, Dipolog, and Dapitan are predominantly Cebuano speakers, while those from 
its closest neighbors, Isabela and Lamitan, are inhabited by a mixture of tribes, namely, the 
Subanon, Yakan, Cebuano, Ilocano, Tausug, Sama, and the Chavacano-speaking natives of 
Basilan.  Further down south are the islands of Jolo and Tawi-Tawi, whose natives are Tausug, 
Sama, and Badjaos, some of whom migrated to the Zamboanga Peninsula for economic and 
 4
educational reasons.  Thus, the intermingling of the Zamboangueños with the other ethnic tribes 
has made the populace multicultural and multilingual. 
As a result, some aspects of communication relevant to the process of interlingual 
interpretation in the courtroom poses a problem of linguistic manipulation of the witness’ 
testimony through the court interpreter because the adversarial context of the courtroom could 
get in the way of authentic interaction. Against this backdrop, most of the courts in a multilingual 
setting need interpreters who are expected to translate the questions from English to the native 
language, and from the native language to English during the courtroom interrogation.  Since the 
most dominant languages used by the people of Zamboanga City and the surrounding provinces, 
cities and municipalities are Chavacano, Cebuano, Filipino, and Tausug, the interpreters at 
Branches 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the 9
th
 Judicial Regional Trial Courts are expected to be, at the 
least, trilingual who are assumed to be competent in providing a faithful interpretation of the 
witness’ testimony. Consequently, being multilingual, the Zamboanga Regional Trial Courts 
have to surmount the linguistic constraints brought about by interlingual communication during 
the courtroom interrogation.  
1.2 Statement of the Problem 
The study investigated the pragmalinguistics of courtroom interrogation in Zamboanga 
City, a multilingual context. Specifically, it aimed to answer the following questions: 
1.2.1 How can the linguistic structures of questions asked by the prosecution and the 
defense lawyers and interpreted by the interpreter in the courtrooms in 
Zamboanga City be described in terms of the following lexico-semantic and 
syntactic structures:  
                                1.2.1.1 Lexico-semantic choice  
 5
                1.2.1.1.1 modal auxiliaries (can and could interpreted either as  
                                pwede  ba, pabor, or mahimu ba in the local dialect)  
                     1.2.1.1. 2 nominals of address  
        1.2.1.2  Syntactic forms of questions  
                            1.2.1.2.1 WH-questions  
                                        1.2.1.2.2 Bi-polar questions/Tag questions 
                            1.2.1.2.3 Open-ended questions? 
1.2.2 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:  
  1.2.2.1 preliminary questions,  
                    1.2.2.2 information-checking questions, and  
        1.2.2.3 evidence-validating questions?    
1.2.3 What questioning strategies (1) indirect speech acts (requests or commands), or  
            (2) declaratives without tags predominate the defense and prosecution lawyer’s  
             questions as mediated by  the court interpreter during the courtroom interrogation  
              in terms of the following discourse functions:  
1.2.3.1 defense-constructing and, 
1.2.3.2 blame-implicating? 
 6
1.2 .4   What interpretative strategies are used by court interpreters to convey the  
            lawyers’ questions and witnesses’ answers? 
1.3 Theoretical/Conceptual Framework 
The study is principally grounded in the notion of discourse as social action and 
interaction, as advanced by van Dijk (1997).  He claims that as a social action, discourse falls 
under the hierarchies of action, whereby a language user “accomplishes acts as making assertions 
and accusations, replying to questions, defending ourselves, being polite, or engaging in 
strategies of positive self-presentation,” and illustrates that “discourse may be constituted by a 
complex hierarchy of different acts at different levels of abstractness and generality, whereby we 
do X by or while doing Y” (p. 5). Hence, in an institutional setting like courtroom interrogation, 
when the lawyer addresses the witness or the judge, he/she actually does many things. 
At the macro level, interactions in an institutional setting manifest the social, political, or 
cultural functions of discourse within institutions, groups, or society and culture at large.  In fact, 
van Dijk (1997) asserts that the talk may belong to a hierarchy of actions and necessarily could 
perform a hierarchy of functions.  For instance, an assertion may function as a verdict when 
made, at an appropriate moment, by a judge in court, and this verdict may in turn function as 
imparting justice in a special legal system.  In sum, people do many social things, in either 
formal (courtroom, in this case) or informal settings while engaging in text and talk, a fact that is 
embedded in the properties of speech and could surface if given a closer scrutiny (van Dijk, 
1997).   
 Arguably, the fundamental dimension of discourse as action is the fact that it is also a 
practical, social and cultural phenomenon since a language user utilizes it to accomplish social 
acts and participate in social interaction.  Most verbal interchange is embedded in various social 
 7
and cultural contexts such as informal gatherings with friends or professional, institutional 
encounters such as parliamentary debates (van Dijk, 1997).   
To a certain extent, courtroom interaction is an institutional debate in that the opposing 
sides present their arguments in favor of their respective clients and aim to destroy the arguments 
of the opposite side through a series of questions, the sequencing of which is pivotal in winning a 
case. Thus, questions are verbal acts employed by the lawyer in a multilingual setting, and 
evaluating them using van Dijk’s (1997) concept of discourse as social interaction fits neatly as a 
framework for the analysis of the function of courtroom questions.  The interaction that occurs in 
the courts is designed to accomplish an institutional, as well as social goals.  Be that as it may, 
van Dijk (1997) stresses that discourse, as action in society does not mean that we are no longer 
interested in structure.  On the contrary, he claims that the analysis of discourse as ongoing, 
social action also focuses on order and organization that consists not only of ordered series of 
words, clauses, sentences and propositions, but also sequences of mutually related acts. On this 
premise, the utterance (i.e. question) is assumed to be formulated by the lawyer using specific 
lexico-semantic and grammatical structures that are so designed and sequenced in that it could 
sometimes convey multiple functions when used in actual verbal interchange depending on the 
intent of the lawyer in asking a particular question (which is what the present study attempted to 
investigate).  
Inasmuch as the present study investigated the triadic verbal exchanges among the 
lawyer, the interpreter and the witness that is situated in a multilingual context, the structure of 
courtroom talk depended primarily on the major participants’ educational, psychological, social, 
cultural orientation on the one hand and their linguistic and communicative capabilities, on the 
other.  In the present study, the court interpreter’s role was vital in that s/he served as the bridge