Abstract
Repair is an integral part of every natural human discursive practice due to cognitive anxiety, stress, emotional valence, inability to recover words from one’s mental lexicon, slip of the tongue, among others. This study examined repair in Ghanaian judicial interactions using authentic judicial discourse data and working within the theoretical frameworks of conversational analysis and language and power. Results indicate that repairables include word search, correction proper and misstatements. Repair types included self-initiated self-repair, other-initiated other-repair, other-initiated self-repair, and other-initiated other-repair and self-repair. Linguistic and discourse-pragmatic strategies employed in initiating and carrying out repair include, pauses, sound prolongation, word/expression repetition, and morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic features like yes-no questions, wh-questions, quantifiers, adjectives denoting exactness, pronouns, laughter, supportives, scolding via pejorative utterances, politeness/address forms, and calling on actors to abide by the courts’ moral code. In sum, repair is important on issues relating to understandability and interpretability of what judicial participants say, acceptable modes communication and their impact on facts needed to make cases judicable. Stakeholders in Ghanaian judicial practice and Ghanaian jurisprudence must take note of repair’s un-expendable nature in Ghanaian judicial discourse.
Appendix: Transcription conventions
AUD | audience |
DEF | defendant |
INT | interpreter |
JUD | judge |
LAWR | lawyer |
MAG | magistrate |
PET | petitioner |
PLT | plaintiff |
PLT-LAW | plaintiff’s lawyer |
WIT | witness |
( ) | duration of pause in second |
: | long vowel |
:: | longer than long vowel |
# | unintelligible syllables |
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- A bibliometric study of research trends in cross-border cybercrime
- Repair in Ghanaian judicial discourse
- The de-legitimation of Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) in “The Social Dilemma” (2020): a post-digital cognitive-stylistic approach
- Discourse patterning and recursion in the EU case law
- That-complement clauses signalling stance in Nigerian Supreme Court lead judgements: a corpus-based study
- Translation by explicature: a form-based approach for translating legal texts
- Language ideologies and speaker categorization: a case study from the U.S. legal system
- Book Reviews
- Le Cheng and David Machin: The Law and Critical Discourse Studies
- Olimpia G. Loddo: Intersemiotic Legal Translation
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- A bibliometric study of research trends in cross-border cybercrime
- Repair in Ghanaian judicial discourse
- The de-legitimation of Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) in “The Social Dilemma” (2020): a post-digital cognitive-stylistic approach
- Discourse patterning and recursion in the EU case law
- That-complement clauses signalling stance in Nigerian Supreme Court lead judgements: a corpus-based study
- Translation by explicature: a form-based approach for translating legal texts
- Language ideologies and speaker categorization: a case study from the U.S. legal system
- Book Reviews
- Le Cheng and David Machin: The Law and Critical Discourse Studies
- Olimpia G. Loddo: Intersemiotic Legal Translation