Scholarly record

THE SEQUENTIAL ORGANISATION OF THE ROMANIAN WITNESS EXAMINATION: THE CASE OF POST-EXPANSIONS

M A. Farcasiu

Abstract

This paper looks at the sequences found in the Romanian witness examination, and more specifically at the post turns following an adjacency pair. The speech event of witness examination is coherently organised in the form of minimal, two-turn adjacency pair sequences of questions and answers. Therefore, the adjacency pair is the basic unit of the sequential organisation, made up of a first pair part and a second pair part, a question and an answer in this case. Turns in a conversation are not single utterances, but instead are linked to each other following a certain model of communicative acts and forming a pattern of sequences of communicative acts (or actions, according to the conversational analysts). The data presented here are part of my doctoral thesis research and are based on 100 pages of transcripts of Romanian criminal trials that took place at the Timisoara Courthouse and that I personally attended, recorded, and then transcribed. The paper will first discuss the sequence patterns found in the Romanian courtroom, i.e. in the Romanian witness examinations. Then it will describe each of the patterns in detail according to the functions (communicative acts) expressed by each utterance, trying to offer a better view of the speech event of witness examination, from a linguistic and a conversational point of view.

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