Language and Courtroom Discourse: A Pragmatic Appraisal of Question Types in the Bamenda Court of First Instance

Abstract

Purpose: Questions and answers constitute an important characteristic of courtroom discourse. Facts are established from such interactions and judgements passed at the end of sessions. Essentially, questions could be intriguing and deceptive and consequently could lead to unintentional responses that could implicate or further complicate matters for lay litigants. This paper was therefore designed to describe the types and nature of questions in the Bamenda court of First Instance and to find out the extent to which the lay litigants understood the questions. The paper also intended to find out the lay litigants’ attitudes towards final judgment and whether they felt that negative outcomes were due to the nature of the questions.

Materials and Methods: Fifteen court sessions were observed and 10 randomly selected lay litigants were interviewed on the outcome of the proceedings. The questions and responses were noted. The Critical Discourse Analysis lens served, as the theoretical frame for the analysis of data for the paper.

Findings: The findings revealed that direct and indirect questions are used in the court. Such direct questions as wh-questions, tag-questions, yes-no questions and choice questions were used for different purposes and in some cases they were misunderstood by lay litigants who gave confusing responses that rather created more problems for them.