Facework strategies in interpreter-mediated cross-examinations: a corpus-assisted approach

Abstract

In cross-examination, witnesses’ face is frequently threatened by legal professionals. Face-threatening acts (Brown/Levinson 1987) are considered powerful institutional tools for lawyers; however, in a bilingual courtroom where all the interactions are mediated by a third party, the interpreter, this is often complicated. Drawing on a small-scale corpus, five bilingual moot court cross-examinations interpreted by Interpreting and Translation (I&T) Master’s students at UNSW Sydney, this paper investigates facework strategies embedded in cross-examining questions and in their Mandarin interpretation based on Penman’s (1990) facework schema. More specifically, it examines the way facework strategies are used in cross-examination questions, the extent to which they are maintained or modified in the interpretation, and how that may affect the pragmatics of the courtroom questions. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the pragmatics of interpreted courtroom questions and to legal interpreter training.