چكيده لاتين :
During the interrogation process and its discourse language contains certain
characteristics that can be the source of many linguistic researches and studies.
One of the most important issues that can be mentioned in the interrogation
process is how to evolve the verbal communication by the interrogator in order
to obtain the truth of the interrogee’s statements. In this regard, the interrogator
uses strategies to advance the discourse in his/her own way. In analyzing the
data, the participants in the interrogation interaction were divided into two
groups of specialist and non-specialist. The first category are the people who are
familiar with the law and the legal language and include the police, judge,
lawyer, etc. On the other hand, the second group are people who are not familiar
with the law (or at least have little familiarity), including the accused, the
plaintiff. In the present essay, based on the corpus of ten litigation files and
based on the analysis of the verbal interaction between the expert (judge) and the
non-expert (the accused, the plaintiff), we attempted to extract the various
strategies used by the interrogator. The strategies include question formulation,
use of repeated questions, quotation clauses, contrast,the use of the phrase
"khob" as a discourse maker and interruption.
1. Introduction
In a simple definition forensic linguistics is an attempt to explore the way
relationships between people in legal contexts are constructed through
language. What we are dealing with in forensic linguistics in general is the
analysis of legal writing or legal talk. The present study focuses on legal talk
in interrogation, specifically questioning in trial. In the present study we
examined the interrogation process, which includes the strategies that the interrogator uses during the interrogation process to obtain answers to his
questions and to discover the truth. Based on the issues raised, the present
study seeks to answer the following questions:
1. What strategies does the interrogator use to obtain the truth in the
interrogation process?
2. What is the formal and pragmatic representation of the questions
during the interrogation process?
2. Literature Review
Holt and Johnson (2010) study the socio-pragmatic aspects of legal talk:
police interviews and trial discourse. They believe that reporting,
contrasting, formulating and repeating are at the heart of the process of
formulating the facts of the legal story in trials and police interviews. Their
use produces important fact-making moments that distil and encode a
version of reality, which play an important part in the legal case: an
authorized-authoritative version.
Momeni (2012) show how linguistic analysis can help to identify
language crime especially when there are no clear available proofs or
documents. As she points out language crime is accompanied with speech
acts like lying, threatening bribery. After observing numerous cases in courts
and police stations (Bureau of Police Investigation), the author chose data
which included “lies” and analyzed it in two ways. First, “defendants’
statements” and second “power relation” are analyzed. The author draws this
conclusion that linguistics strategies like semantic tools (schema, frame, verb
meaning), syntactic tools (mood of verb), discoursal tools (power relation)
… can be effective to identify and analyze language crimes. Perjury/lie is
considered as a crime in both courts and Bureau of Police Investigation.
Analyzing all language crimes in one article is not possible; therefore, the
author analyzes just one which is perjury/lie.
Momeni and Azizi (2015) study the role of topic shift and violence of
Grice Principles in interrogation. They show the role of changing the subject
and violation of Grice cooperative principles in interrogations. That is, the
accused seeks to prolong the duration of the investigation or provide
incomplete information to the interrogator officer which consistently violates
these strategies. On the other hand, the legal context and power relations do
not allow the accused to change the subject according to his own desire or give irrelevant answers constantly. If this happens, it can be concluded that
the accused tried to mislead the interrogator in linguistic terms. This research
is a fieldwork study. After tens of observations of interrogations recorded in
Tehran Police Bureau, the real samples were selected, classified and studied.
The authors introduce these principles and demonstrate their use in
interrogations.
Razavian and Jalil,(2018) study the “spoken features of the robbery
defendants in court”. They try to obtain spoken features of robbery
defendants in order to provide a unique conversation of thieves in detection
of crimes. The authors are trying to describe and explain speech of robbery
defendants in Semnan province judicial system from the perspective of
Forensic Linguistics. The results show that the robbery defendants by using
many linguistic principles such as high modality, activism deletion,
infelicitous utterance, illocutionary act try to gain interrogators confidence.
Investigation of lawsuits details show that robbery defendants in their
defenses use linguistic principles differently. In particular, they use in their
speech modality for 29%, contradictions for 16%, activism deletion for 14%,
presupposition for 10%, speech acts for 3%, implicature for 1% and middle
voice construction for 0/5%. Results suggest that attention to features and
elegances of language like low modality, contradiction in speech, activism
deletion, presupposition, implicature; middle voice construction and Gricean
Cooperative Principles can help investigators and judges at crime detection.
The other researches that concerns language in legal discourse in Iran are as
follows: Rowshan & Behboudi (2009), Momeni (2011), Momeni & Azizi
(2011).
3. Methodology
This research is a fieldwork study. The present study is based on a speech
record of a total of 189 minutes of conversation recording of the
interrogation process of ten cases in two branches of the Shiraz Public
Prosecutor's Office. After tens of observations of interrogations recorded, the
real samples were selected, classified and studied.
4. Results and Discussion
By analyzing the data we found that the interrogator uses specific and
repetitive strategies, and this pattern is present in all cases. Accordingly, we
extract and categorize the strategies which include question formulation, use of repeated questions, quotation clauses, contrast, the use of the phrase
"khob" as a discourse maker marker and interruption. The results show that
all four strategies proposed in the views of Holt and Johnson (2010) included
the formulation, repetition of the question, quotation, and contrast palys
central role in the interrogation discourse. Also, the authors have found three
strategies: "khob" as a discourse maker marker, interruption, and the second
type of question repetition to these strategies.
6. Conclusion
While the formal approaches to the study of language pay attention to the
formal aspects of language, the functional-oriented theories focus on
language use as a means of communication and its application in different
contexts. In the present article, an attempt was made to study another
practical aspect of language in the (specifically) judicial and legal context.
To achieve this, the authors chose the interrogation process in the
prosecutor's office and explored the strategies used in the interrogation
process by the expert (interrogator) and non-expert (defendant, plaintiff,
etc.). One of the main strategies in this process is “the questions” both in
formal and pragmatic aspects. Based on the body of the interrogation process
of ten cases in two branches of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the authors
evaluated the questions raised by the judge and concluded that all four
strategies proposed in the views of Holt and Johnson (2010) are used by
interrogator. They are question formulation, repeated questions, quotation
clauses and contrast, and also, the authors have added three strategies of
"khob" as a discourse maker marker, interruption. It should be noted that the
discourse of interrogation has many different dimensions and aspects, both
in terms of form and function, which requires deeper and broader research in
the field of justice.
