Other-Repetition to Convey and Conceal the Stance of Institutional Participants in Chinese Criminal Trials

Abstract

Based on the examination of 49 Chinese criminal trials transcribed from the audio-visual recordings on the ‘China Court Trial Online’ website (https://tingshen.court.gov.cn/), the institutional participants–prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges–are found to frequently repeat defendants’ responses (‘other-repetition’), after a question–answer adjacency pair. Other-repetition has been described as a resource for showing participation and familiarity (Tannen 2007), initiating repair and registering receipt (Schegloff 1997), and displaying understanding and emotional stance (Svennevig 2004). However, other-repetition in trial discourse has not been thoroughly researched. Therefore, this article aims to further examine this salient institutional linguistic feature in order to explore stance construction as a third turn. It is common to associate certain prosodic features of a repetition with the stance of the speaker. However, prosody may not be a reliable cue for stance interpretation in Chinese courtrooms, as institutional participants might conceal their stance during a repetition. Though they are more explicit in displaying their stance with turn-initial repeats, the distinction between the prosody of repeats for different functions is not categorical. It is found that defendants are sensitive to the lexicogrammar and multimodal cues for stance interpretation.

1 Introduction

Defendant questioning is an important part of the ‘court investigation’ stage of a four-stage trial structure in Chinese criminal trials: court opening, court investigation, court debate, and defendant’s final statement. During this stage, the defendant is sequentially questioned by three different legal professionals: prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges. It is believed that institutional interactions ‘embody a constraint on the “professional” to withhold expressions of surprise, sympathy, agreement, or affiliation in response to lay participants’ describings, claims, etc.’ [6]. However, there are covert ways of indicating affiliation or stance, such as through repetition of defendants’ responses in other-repetition. We find that this practice figures prominently in the institutional participants’ turns. Repetition of a defendant’s response to a prior question includes both full and partial repeats in this third-position turn (i.e., question-response-repeat) and allows for minor modifications such as deictic adjustments as well as minor deletions and additions. Generally, after the repetition of the defendant’s talk, there is a response to the repeat. The schematic representation of the other-repetition sequences in question is demonstrated in Excerpt 1 (a word-for-word glossing is provided before an idiomatic translation.).

Excerpt 1: D-defendant, DL-defence lawyer
(→ indicates the first saying and ⇉the repetition)
1.	辩:	刚才	你	说	呃	你	跟	张某某	是	男女朋友	关系
	DL:	just now	you	say	er	you	and	Zhang	be	boy/girlfriend	relationship
	你们	两个	恋爱			多久 ?
	you	two	romance			how long
	‘Just now you said er you and Zhang were in a romantic relationship. How long was your relationship?’
2.	被:→	恋爱	有			三年				左右	吧
	D:	romance	have			three years				about	PRT
	‘(We were) in a relationship for around three years.’
3.	辩:⇉	三年	左右
	DL:	three years	about
	‘Around three years’
4.	被:	嗯
	D:	Mm

Other-repetition is believed to be a common practice for other-initiated repair, which ‘is perhaps one of the most studied conversational phenomena that have been examined across languages’ [33], and the main reason is that these repetitions ‘can accomplish very different interactional work’ [20]. As a repair initiation, the practice carries out the actions such as seeking completion of missing elements in the original line, seeking clarification, or seeking confirmation [4, 8, 26]. Other-repetition is also found to function beyond a repair such as displaying surprise [8, 26, 32], accomplishing interpersonal involvement [30], and enacting disalignment such as doubt, disagreement, or challenge [1, 11, 28, 31, 33]. Additionally, other-repetition can serve to register a prior turn [4, 8, 19, 22, 26]. Along this line of research, scholars are interested in how a speaker distinguishes between the use of other-repetition for different functions, and they generally agree that communicative resources other than the lexical words are important for both the speakers and the recipients. These resources include prosodic features, sequential context, and multimodal cues. Existing studies mainly focus on prosodic analysis. For example, Kim shows that when a repeat in English is accompanied with rising intonation, it usually ‘perform[s] the social actions of initiating repair, seeking confirmation, or displaying speakers’ emotional attitudes’ [11]. On the other hand, when a repeat is spoken with falling intonation, it indicates registering receipt, or showing agreement with the previous speaker [11]. Benjamin and Walker [1] find that high rise-fall repetitions indicate problems of acceptability. Stevanovic et al. [26] argue that prosody helps differentiate registering from repair in Finnish and shows that when extra affective stance is expressed, different prosodic features can be identified even for the same function. Similarly, Persson [19] shows that prosody can differentiate between repair-initiating and receipt-registering repeats in French. Huhtamäki et al.[8] show that repair- and expectation-oriented repetitions are usually produced with upgraded prosodic features, whereas registering cooccurs with downgraded prosody. Meanwhile, scholars are cautious about the differences between languages in the use and function of other-repetition. For example, Wu [33] points out that it is not as easy to recognise question intonation in Mandarin Chinese, which is a tonal language, and that other-initiated repair through the use of repeat in Chinese has different choices such as question-intoned repeats and repeats suffixed with the final particle a, which has no counterpart in English. Similarly, Finland’s Swedish is found to be different from French and Italian, as ‘melodic alternations are not prominently decisive for the ascription of pragmatic meanings’ [8].

Sequential context and multimodal cues are found to be important in differentiating the functions of a repeat. Wu [33] shows that question-intoned repeats frequently occur in sequentially disjunctive contexts. Schegloff [21] examines three types of sequential position of other-repetition and their functions: repeats in the initiating position to clarify a reference; repeats at responding position to show agreement; repeats at third position after an adjacency pair to acknowledge receipt of a response. Most studies investigate second-position repeat while this research looks at third-position repeat. Furthermore, Couper-Kuhlen [4] points out that visible behaviour (gaze direction, head movement, facial expression, and body position) is important in distinguishing other-repetition actions in English, but the study mentions multimodal cues in passing with no further exploration. This research presents findings regarding prosodic features and multimodal cues (gaze) in distinguishing the functions of other-repetition in third position in courtroom interaction.

Most existing research focuses on the analysis of repetition in daily conversation. Very few studies examine other-repetition in institutional settings including the courtroom. Drew [5] briefly discusses other-repetition after a question–answer adjacency pair and argues that different from repeats in daily conversation, in witness examination, repetition is ‘a means of emphasizing a point for the benefit of the jury’. In Chinese criminal trials, there is no jury, but prosecutors and defence lawyers question the defendants in front of the judges, who are the deciders of fact. However, judges do not just listen (as juries do). They also question defendants, not by interrupting the prosecution or defence activity, as in Anglo-American trials, but as a distinct activity. Therefore, it is safe to assume that other-repetition is not always about emphasis for the judge’s benefit as is demonstrated by Luo and Liao [16], who look at legal professionals’ repetition of defendants’ responses with a question intonation. They contend that echo questions in Chinese courtroom interaction serve the following five functions: (1) Displaying doubt; (2) Seeking confirmation; (3) Seeking further comments on the topic; (4) Establishing a prerequisite for the next question; (5) Registering receipt. Their findings are essentially consistent with the existing findings about the functions of other-repetition, but they do not discuss other-repetition in declarative intonation, nor do they consider other contributing factors to the meaning construction of a repeat. Based on a fine-grained conversation analysis with a focus on prosody, this paper investigates whether prosody helps distinguish different functions of other-repetition in Chinese courtroom interaction and how institutional participants express their stance in repetition.

2 Data and Methodology

The data include the transcripts of the questioning stage of 49 criminal trials, transcribed from videos from an official website which livestreams trials across China (https://tingshen.court.gov.cn/). The trials took place between September 2019 and January 2020. We collected 23 assault trials and 26 murder trials in four cities widely spread across China. Only trials with high audio and video quality were selected to aid transcription and analysis. The transcribed corpus contains a total of 284,404 words, with the questioning stage ranging from 1521 to 11,529 words. To protect the privacy of people involved or mentioned in the trials, pseudonyms have been used in the transcripts. Participants are labelled as P for prosecutor, DL for defence lawyer, J for judge, and D for defendant in the transcripts. Transcription symbols are shown in Appendix 1.

Defendant questioning is composed of four sub-stages:

• (1) The defendant is asked by the judge to make a plea of guilty or not guilty;

• (2) The defendant is questioned by the prosecutor;

• (3) The defendant is questioned by the defence lawyer;

• (4) The defendant is questioned by the judge.

This research is a conversation analytic study that analyses prosody, turn design, and sequence organisation, and is complemented by computational and corpus linguistic approaches. Python coding is used to extract repeat-based sequences. As repetition of some commonly used function words is also automatically extracted based on the coding, manual checking was carried out to remove the extracted sequences that are not the other-repetition we want to study in this research. Every extracted sequence includes four turns: question, answer, repetition, response to the repetition. When a longer stretch of talk is required for further analysis, corpus tools are used to identify the trial from which the sequence is extracted. In addition, Praat software version 6.3.15 [2] is used to assist with the prosodic analysis.

In Mandarin Chinese, intonation conveys modality and tone, through which a speaker’s emotion and attitude can be detected [27]. Intonation mainly concerns the melodic and rhythmic aspects of spoken language [13]. As Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, its intonation is complex and different from English as it is subject to the combined influence of tone and prosody [15]. Chinese scholars have wide discussions about the prosody of a question in terms of its difference from a statement. They find that the pitch of a question is in general higher than a statement [24, 34, 37], and that a question usually features a pitch curve that ends at a higher pitch than a statement [13, 14, 34]. A more recent study [35] points out that the pitch contour of a statement features a flat beginning, a falling central part and a steep fall at the end, while the pitch contour of an interrogative sentence rises faster at the beginning, falls more mildly in the middle, and falls more slowly at the end. All studies of the prosody of interrogative sentences are conducted with reference to the prosody of a statement containing the same words. But it is impractical to do so in the examination of our data, which only provides a question-intoned repetition (interrogative repetition) or a non-question-intoned repetition (declarative repetition). Though the original saying by the defendant is usually a statement, the age and gender, two factors influencing pitch range [27], of the questioner usually differ from the defendant. So, we mainly rely on auditory perception to decide whether a repetition is question-intoned or not, while providing the pitch contours of the original saying and the repetition for reference when relevant. Other aspects of prosody such as pause, rhythm, and accent [15], are analysed with conversation analysis concepts when relevant. In addition, the research also examines pitch range, which is found to be an important parameter in intonation analysis [13].

Other-repetition in the dataset mainly takes three forms (Table 1): stand-alone repeats (Excerpt 1), a repeat-based tag question, which is constituted with a repetition and a question tag ‘是吧 (shi ba)’ or ‘是吗 (shi ma)’, meaning ‘right?’, and turn-initial repeats, where a repetition is followed immediately by a question. All three forms might be an interrogative repetition or a declarative repetition. As the proportion of repeat-based tag questions in the turns by the three institutional questioners is small, it is not discussed in this article. Table 1 shows that repeat-based turns represent a considerable proportion of the questioners’ turns: 18% in the case of prosecutors, 9% for defence lawyers, and 14% for judges. Prosecutors and judges are more similar to each other in terms of the quantitative results, and the detailed analysis in the remainder of this article shows that their questioning style is also similar.

Table 1 Repeat-based turns as a proportion of the total turns by prosecutors (P), defence lawyers (DL), and judges (J)

3 Other-Repetition to Convey and Conceal Stance

The analysis starts with turn-initial repeats and then moves to stand-alone repeats. Turn-initial repeats display a speaker’s stance more explicitly than the stand-alone repeats, based on the prosodic cues of the repetition and the question after the repetition. However, the situation is more complex in the case of stand-alone repeats. Though question-intoned repetition can convey negative stance, not all negative stance is conveyed through a question intonation. Declarative repetition can imply challenge. In line with prior findings about repetition in institutional contexts [20, 21], registering is found to be an important function of stand-alone other-repetition in courtroom interaction. It usually conveys a speaker’s neutral stance. However, sometimes the speakers’ evaluation embodied in the ‘registering repeat’ is found to be negative a few turns later. Nevertheless, as it is repeated, neither the interlocutor nor the analyst could immediately identify the speaker’s stance as there is no obvious prosodic indicator of different stances. As a result, a stand-alone declarative repeat is usually regarded as simply registering. The following two sections provide a detailed analysis of other-repetition in turn-initial position and stand-alone other-repetition in terms of their functions and prosodic features.

3.1 Turn-Initial Repeats to Convey Disaffiliation

Turn-initial repeats occur in a repeat-prefaced turn where questioners ask a question immediately after a repeat. Turn-initial repeats are examined separately from stand-alone repeats because they are different in terms of rhythm, with the former being followed immediately by other talk. In comparison with stand-alone repeats, the stance conveyed through turn-initial repeats can be more easily identified with the clues provided by the prosody and the talk immediately afterwards.

Schegloff [22] looks at turn-initial repeats in English and contends that it is ‘the target or point of reference for a further action to be taken in a subsequent turn constructional unit in the turn.’ He also finds that ‘one common sequential environment for these turn-initial repeats is before rejections, corrections, disalignments, and other negatively-valenced (or “dispreferred”) actions.’ Research about turn-initial repeats in Russian [3] and French [19] also find such repetitions indicate that something in the prior turn is problematic. More detailed analysis reveals the prosodic features of the repetition. Walker and Benjamin [31] find that the turn-initial repetition is quieter than the subsequent talk. Bolden [3] demonstrates that the prosodic contour differentiates the nature of the problem in the prior turn with continuing or final intonation indicating a problem with the sequence-initiating action while nonfinal intonation displays a problem in information retrieval. However, none of the above studies looks at the practice in institutional talk. And none of them focuses on turn-initial repeats in third position while sequential placement critically influences the action accomplished in practice [21, 23].

Turn-initial repeats in our dataset are mostly declarative repeats with very few exceptions. Different from prior findings, we find that the turn-initial repeats can serve to both simply register a receipt without indicating any problem in the prior turn and display a negative stance toward the prior turn. And the prosodic features can be helpful in distinguishing the different functions, but not in a categorical manner. The first two excerpts below (Excerpts 2 and 3) show two registering repeats. Both repeats are declarative repeats and feature a mildly falling pitch trace (Figs. 1 and 2). The pitch trace is similar when the turn-initial repeats convey doubt (Excerpts 4 and 5). However, the pitch range becomes wider when the repeats imply challenge (Excerpts 6 and 7).

Fig. 1

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 5 of Excerpt 2

Fig. 2

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 5 of Excerpt 3

Excerpt 2:
1.	公:	在	哪	放	的	这个	刀 ?
	P:	at	where	put	PRT	this	knife
	‘Where (did you) put the knife?’
2.	被:	在	墙上	插	着
	D:	at	wall-on	insert	CONT
	‘(It) was placed on the wall.’
3.	公:	是	干	嘛	用	的 ?
	P:	be	do	what	use	PRT
	‘What was it used to do?’
4.	被:→	修	肉	用	的
	D:	trim	meat	use	PRT
	‘(It was) used to trim meat.’
5.	公:⇉	修	肉	< 修	猪肉	用	的
	P:	trim	meat	trim	pork	use	PRT
	‘Trim meat, <(it was) used to trim pork.’
6.	被:	对
	D:	Right
7.	公:	拿	这个	刀	你	怎么	扎	的	江某某	啊 ?
	P:	hold	this	knife	you	how	stab	PRT	Jiang	PRT
	‘How did you stab Jiang with this knife?’

In Excerpt 2, prosecutor and defendant are discussing the murder weapon, a knife that was used to trim meat. Before this sequence, they were talking about the defendant’s job as a worker in a meat processing plant. At this point, both sides are clear that the plant deals with pork. The quick start of the second ‘修(trim)’ and the subsequent talk, which specifies the meat as pork in a declarative sentence, demonstrates that the turn-initial repeat in line 5 is simply registering receipt. The confirmation in turn 6 is in response to the second part of turn 5. Additionally, line 7, where the prosecutor shifts to talk about the use of the knife, also shows that the prosecutor has no doubt or uncertainty about the knife itself.

Excerpt 3 captures the beginning of a prosecutor’s questioning, which seeks confirmation about the plea made by the defendant in the preceding pleading stage. There is no connection between the turn-initial repeat in line 5 (also no problem) and the follow-up question (what’s the relation between you and (.) the victim He?), which supports the argument that it is a registering repeat. As the questioning process is an information collection process which is recorded for future reference, the display of the receipt of information is especially important in such contexts, as is found by Svennevig [28]: ‘Repetition may thus be a way of marking the official status of an answer as it is recorded for the institutional purposes at hand’. Registering repetition does not explicitly reveal the attitude or stance of the questioner and the pitch traces of both turn-initial repeats are similar with a mildly falling pitch trace (Figs. 1 and 2). The abrupt high pitch of ‘问 (problem)’ is due to the coughing of the defendant at that moment.

Excerpt 3:
1.	公:	刚才	审判长	问	你	说	对	起诉书	指控	的	事实
	P:	just now	chief judge	ask	you	say	to	indictment	accuse	PRT	fact
	没有	异议	是吧 ?
	no	objection	right
	‘Just now (when) the chief judge asked you, you said (you had) no objection to the fact charged in the indictment, right?’
2.	被:	没有
	D:	no
	‘No (objection).’
3.	公:	这个	时间	和	地点(.)	有	问题		吗 ?
	P:	this	time	and	location	have	problem		Q
	‘Is there a problem with the time and location(.) (stated in the indictment)?’
4.	被:→	没	问题 =
	D:	No	problem =
5.	公:⇉	=也	都	没有	问题
	P:	also	all	no	problem
					(defendant coughing)
	你	跟(.)	这个	被害人	何某某	是	什么	关系 ?
	you	and	this	victim	He	be	what	relationship
	‘=Also no problem, what’s the relationship between you and (.) the victim He?’
6.	被:	嗯	男女朋友		。关系。
	D:	mm	boy/girlfriend		relationship
	‘Mm (we were) in a romantic 。relationship。.’

A similar pitch trace is observed for the turn-initial repeats in Excerpts 4 and 5, where the turn-initial repeat is used to signal doubt about a response. Both repeats are declarative repeats.

Excerpt 4:

1.

审:

2008

年

毕业-

2008

年

到

2011

年

在

江西

念

念

念

J:

2008

year

graduate-

2008

year

to

2011

year

in

Jiangxi

read

read

read

什么

书?

what

book

‘In 2008 (you) graduated- from 2008 to 2011 in Jiangxi (you) studied, studied, studied what?’

2.

被:→

呃

就是

中专

D:

er

just

secondary-level vocational school

‘Er, just a vocational school at the secondary level.’

3.

审:⇉

中专

是

大专

还是

中专

呢 ?

J:

secondary level

be

tertiary level

or

secondary level

Q

‘A vocational school at the secondary level, is it a vocational school at the tertiary or secondary level? ‘

4.

被:

嗯(2 s)

应该

是(.)

大专

吧

D:

mm

should

be

tertiary level

PRT

‘Mm(2 s) it should be (.) at tertiary level.’

Before Excerpt 4, the defendant talked about his experience in high school. In China, the vocational school that one goes to after high school is at the tertiary rather than secondary level. In line 3, the judge’s alternative question that follows the repetition pinpoints the problem in the repeated item, so the repetition implies doubt. But Fig. 3 shows a slightly falling pitch contour, clearly indicating a declarative intonation.

Fig. 3

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 4

Excerpt 5:
1.	辩:	你	去	找	张某某		干	什么?
	DL:	you	go	look for	Zhang		do	what
	‘Why did you look for Zhang?’
2.	被:→	我	说	我	走::	她	好多	衣服	在	我	那里
	D:	I	say	I	leave	she	so many	clothes	at	my	there
	‘Because I was about to lea::ve, she still got so many clothes at my place.’
3.	辩:⇉	好 多		衣服	在	你们	是(.)	同	同居	是吗 ?
	DL:	so many		clothes	at	you	be	co	cohabit	right
	‘So many clothes at (your place), you were (.) co, cohabiting, right?’
4.	被:	对
	D:	Right

In Excerpt 5, the doubt about the repeated item ‘好多衣服在(so many clothes at (your place))’ is evidenced in the pause and hesitation of saying ‘cohabitation’ in the follow-up question (line 3). But the repetition is produced in declarative intonation. And Fig. 4 shows a mildly falling pitch contour. These four excerpts (Excerpts 2–5) demonstrate that pitch contour cannot distinguish between turn-initial repeats for registering and repeats for doubt. And both types of repetition feature declarative intonation, contrary to the impression that repeats for doubt should be question-intoned. In comparison, the pitch range becomes wider when the repeat indicates negative evaluation and is followed by a challenging question as shown in Excerpts 6 and 7.

Fig. 4

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 5

Excerpt 6:
1.	公:	你	见	过	这个	石块	吗?(.)		这个	[石头
	P:	you	see	ASP	this	stone	Q		this	stone
	‘Did you see this stone? (.) this [stone’
2.	被:→	[没有	见	过
	D:	not	see	ASP
	‘[(I) didn’t see it.’
3.	公:	你	也	没有	见	过	是吧?
	P:	you	also	not	see	ASP	right
	‘You also didn’t see (it), right?’
4.	被:	是
	D:	Yes
5.	公:	那就是	你	没有	见	过,	你	动	过	它	吗?
	P:	that is	you	not	see	ASP	you	touch	ASP	it	Q
	‘So you didn’t see it, did you touch it?’
6.	被:→	没有
	D:	No
7.	公:⇉	没有	见	过,	没有	动	过
	P:	not	see	ASP	not	touch	ASP
	< 这	石块	上(.)	除了	有	被害人	的		血迹	和	毛发
	this	stone	on	aside from	have	victim	PRT		blood stain	and	hair
	怎么	还	有	你的	血迹 ?		。这		怎么	解释。
	how come	also	have	your	blood stain		this		how	explain
	‘(You) didn’t see it, didn’t touch it. < On this stone(.) aside from the victim’s blood stain and hair, how come there was also your blood? 。How (do you) explain it?。’
8.	被:	我	不	知道
	D:	I	not	know
	‘I don’t know.’

In Excerpt 6, the prosecutor starts the questioning about the stone, the key weapon involved in the case, with a yes–no question (Did you see this stone?). In response, the defendant denies it. In line 3, the prosecutor seeks confirmation about this with a tag question and gets a confirmation from the defendant, building on which, the prosecutor proceeds to ask another question about the stone (did you touch it?). The answer to the question is already known based on the denial to the first question: if he didn’t see the stone, he would not have touched it. Nevertheless, the prosecutor still asks this question. This can be explained retroactively by the question in the ensuing repeat-prefaced turn: how come there was the defendant’s blood stain on the stone. That is only possible if the defendant touched it. By asking these questions, the prosecutor gets the repeated item ((You) didn’t see it, didn’t touch it.) confirmed, which directly contradicts with what the evidence suggests and thus renders the question more powerful, as it coerces the defendant to give an explanation to such a seemingly unreasonable phenomenon. And the prosodic design contributes to the strong force of the repeat-prefaced turn. The repeat features a steep falling pitch trace at the end (Fig. 6), which displays the assertiveness of the speaker. And by comparison with the original saying (Fig. 5), the repetition has a much wider pitch range of around 250 Hz, indicating the strong emotion of the speaker. After the repetition, the follow-up question has a quick start on the first character ‘这(this)’. The closeness between the repeat and the question leaves no gap for the defendant to confirm or explain and shows the confidence of the prosecutor in the repeated item and the force of the question. The defendant is left with no leeway and in the end produces a ‘not know’ response.

Fig. 5

The pitch trace of the first saying in line 2 of Excerpt 6

Fig. 6

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 7 of Excerpt 6

Similarly, in Excerpt 7, the repeat-prefaced turn also conveys the questioner’s disbelief in the repeated item from the defendant’s response. The defendant claims that he was holding a knife in front of the victim only to scare him. The duplication of ‘吓唬(scare)’ downgrades [25] the scariness in line 2. The prosecutor repeats it in line 3 before a but-prefaced turn. And the stressed ‘实际上呢(in fact)’ highlights the incongruence between the response and his actual behaviour, indicating the prosecutor’s disbelief and suggesting the defendant’s dishonesty. Figure 7 shows that the repeat in this excerpt also features a wider pitch range (over 200 Hz), though the slightly rising boundary tone (他 ‘him’) suggests a less assertive ending. Excerpts 6 and 7 demonstrate a high correlation between a wide pitch range and a challenge-implicated repetition.

Fig. 7

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 7

Excerpt 7:

1.

公:

你

直接

回答

我,

你

要

想

干 嘛 ?

P:

you

directly

answer

me

you

want

think

do what

‘Answer me directly, what did you want to do?’

2.

被:→

我

就

想

吓唬

吓唬

他

D:

I

just

want

scare

scare

him

‘I just wanted to scare him a bit.’

3.

公:⇉

吓唬

吓唬

他

scare

scare

him

但

实际上

呢

你

拿

刀

怎么

扎

的

对方

啊 ?

but

in fact

PRT

you

take

knife

how

stab

PRT

the other party

PRT

‘Scare him a bit, but in fact how did you stab the victim?’

This section shows that turn-initial repeat usually adopts a declarative intonation and that a wider pitch range is seen in repetition that implies challenge. It also points out that the stance conveyed is not simply accomplished through the prosodic features. Turn design and the sequential design with several preceding turns building up to the strong force in the repeat-prefaced turn are equally important. In addition, it should be noted that no challenge-implicated turn-initial repeats are found in the turns by the defence lawyers while both prosecutors and judges use them.

3.2 Stand-Alone Repeats to Conceal a Speaker’s Stance

Prior studies find that stand-alone other-repetition can register a receipt of a response or initiate a repair to seek confirmation or clarification [4, 8, 22, 26]. Beyond repair, it could also display a speaker’s negative evaluation toward the repeated item. In the dataset, we find that though question-intoned repeats might convey negative stance, prosody is not always a reliable factor to determine the function of a declarative repetition. In particular, prosodic cues cannot distinguish between a simple registering repeat and a repeat aiming to challenge a response.

Excerpt 8 presents a question-intoned repeat to show disbelief, but this is rarely seen in the questioners’ speech. It shows an interaction between a male judge and a male defendant. The repetition (line 3) removes the ‘吧 (PRT)’, which was used by the defendant to mark a hedge at the end of an utterance, and thus the judge upgrades the certainty of the repeated item. In addition, the pitch range of the judge (Fig. 9) is much wider than the defendant (Fig. 8), though both are males. These features contribute to the judge indicating doubt about the defendant’s response, which can be further supported by the question in line 5 ((So you) just went to the knife directly?).

Fig. 8

The pitch trace of the first saying in line 2 of Excerpt 8

Fig. 9

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 8

Excerpt 8:

1.

公:

那

你

怎么

知道

往

屋

奔

冰箱

上面

去

啊?

P:

in that case

you

how

know

toward

house

toward

fridge

on-side

go

PRT

‘Why did you search on the fridge inside the house?’

2.

被:→

那

是

打

懵

了,

反正

是(.)

条件

反射

吧

D:

that

be

beat

daze

PST

anyway

be

conditioned

reflex

PRT

‘That’s because I was beaten to dizziness, that was (.) kind of a conditioned reflex.’

3.

公:⇉

条件

反射?

P:

Conditioned

reflex?

4.

被:

嗯

D:

Mm

5.

公:

就

直接

奔

刀

去

了 ?=

P:

just

directly

toward

knife

go

PST

‘(So you) just went to the knife directly?=’

6.

被:

=不是

不是,

不是

奔

刀

去

D:

no

no

not

toward

knife

go

因为

平时

那个

用

完了

哪

都

放,

because

usually

that

use

finish-PST

where

all

put

不

是

放

在

那,

正好

抓着

not

be

put

at

there

right

grab

‘ = No, no, (I was) not aiming for the knife. Because the knife was usually put randomly. And it was right there, and (I) happened to grab it.’

Excerpt 9 shows an instance where the questioner has doubt about a response and wants to seek clarification about the repeated item, but the repeat (line 3) is not question-intoned, and the defendant orients to it as confirmation-seeking or registering and provides a minimal response. But the why-question in line 5 shows the judge’s doubt (In that case why (did you) put (it) in your pocket? Was this a tool for work?). This example shows that doubt-implicated repeat is not necessarily accompanied by a question intonation. But the wide pitch range of the repetition (Fig. 10) unveils the strong emotion of the judge, in an unusual case. Most of the time prosecutors and judges are found to maintain a calm attitude, even when they find a response problematic, so in such circumstances, prosodic features do not reveal the institutional participant’s stance.

Fig. 10

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 9

Excerpt 9:
1.	审:	购买	之后	你	放到	哪里	了 ?
	J:	purchase	after	you	put	where	PST
	‘Where did you put (the knife) after you bought (it)?’
2.	被:→	买了	之后	就	搁	兜里	了
	D:	buy-PST	after	then	put	pocket	PST
	‘After purchase, I put (it) in the pocket’
3.	审:⇉	一直	放	在	兜里
	J:	all the time	put	in	pocket
	‘(You) put (it) in the pocket all the time’
4.	被:	嗯
	D:	Mm
5.	审:	那	为啥	要	放	在	你的	兜里	呢 ?
	J:	in that case	why	want	put	in	your	pocket	Q
	这	是	你	干活	的	工具	吗 ?
	this	be	you	work	PRT	tool	Q
	‘In that case why (did you) put (it) in your pocket? Was this a tool for work?’
6.	被:	也	使	过	也	嗯::	不	经常	使
	D:	also	use	ASP	also	mm	not	often	use
	‘(I) used (it), but mm:: not very often’

Before presenting instances of doubt- and challenge-implicated repetitions that are produced calmly, we would like to present Excerpt 10, a typical instance of repeat by the questioner where the repeat registers a response and conveys a neutral stance, whose prosody is provided as a reference for comparison with that of doubt- and challenge-implicated repetition. In line 3, the defence lawyer repeats that the relationship lasted for ‘around three years’. In comparison with the pitch trace of the original saying (Fig. 11), which has a slight rising ending contour on ‘吧(ba)’, a particle that functions to indicate a hedge, the repetition (Fig. 12) shows a more assertive attitude and thus removes the uncertainty in the original saying. Therefore, repetition in declarative intonation is not confirmation-seeking. Instead, it provides a confirmed version directly. The defendant provides a minimal response with a response token ‘mm’ (line 4) as a volunteered confirmation [19]. The question in line 5 (Have you discussed getting married?), which is built on the repeated item, also shows that it is a registering repeat.

Fig. 11

The pitch trace of the original saying in line 2 of Excerpt 10

Fig. 12

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 10

Excerpt 10:
1.	辩:	刚才	你	说	呃	你	跟	张某某	是	男女朋友	关系
	DL:	just now	you	say	er	you	and	Zhang	be	boy/girlfriend	relationship
	你们	两个	两个	恋爱		多久 ?
	you	two	that	romance		how long
	‘Just now you said er you and Zhang were in a romantic relationship. How long was your relationship?’
2.	被: →	恋爱	三年	左右	吧
	D:	romance	three years	about	PRT
	‘(We were) in a relationship for around 3 years.’
3.	辩:⇉	三年		左右
	DL:	three years		about
	‘Around three years’
4.	被:	嗯
	D:	Mm
5.	辩:	说	过	要	结婚	吗 ?
	DL:	say	ASP	want	marry	Q
	‘Have you discussed getting married?’
6.	被:	当时	在 在 这里	还 没有(.)	没有	说	结婚	的	事
	D:	at the time	at at  here	still not	not	say	marry	PRT	thing
	‘At the time at, at the place, not yet (.) (we) didn’t yet talk about getting married.’

The comparison of the more assertive intonation in the repetition than the original saying in Excerpt 10 shows the questioner’s attempt to ‘nail down’ [18] a response and ‘fix’ the testimony for the record [12]. Neutral stance is found in registering repeats. Interestingly, in the following two excerpts (Excerpts 11 and 12), the repeats aim to raise doubt about or challenge a prior turn, but the prosodic features disguise them as registering repeats.

Excerpt 11:
1.	公:	那	这	2万 2	到底	是	她的	还是	你的	呀
	P:	in that case	this	22 thousand	after all	be	hers	or	yours	PRT
	‘In that case after all the 22,000 yuan belonged to her or you?’
2.	被:→	(.)是	我们 俩		一起	的
	D:	be	us      two		together	PRT
	‘(.) Us together.’
3.	公:⇉	一起	的
	P:	together	PRT
	‘Together’
4.	被:	对	但		但是/
	D:	right	but		but
	‘Right, but but/’
5.	公:	那	既然		是	一起	的
	P:	in that case	since		be	together	PRT
	为什么	她	还		要	你	写	欠条	啊 ?
	why	she	still		want	you	write	IOU	Q
	‘Since it belonged to you together, why did she ask you to write an IOU?’

Prior to this sequence, the defendant claimed that his partner, the victim in this case, oversaw their finance, and then there was a discussion of 22,000 yuan withdrawn from the victim’s bank account by the defendant. In line 1, the prosecutor’s use of ‘到底(after all)’ displays his confusion about the ownership of the money. The defendant resists the question’s design by denying both possibilities suggested by the prosecutor: the money did not belong to any of them alone. Instead, it belonged to both of them. In providing a dispreferred response, the defendant delays with a minor pause and highlights his point by stressing ‘一起 (together)’, whose pitch range is wide and pitch register high as shown in Fig. 13. Then the prosecutor repeats the last three characters ‘一起的 (together)’, which features a flat pitch trace (Fig. 14). In response, the defendant provides a confirmation and intends to elaborate but is interrupted. Then the prosecutor stresses ‘既然(since)’ (line 5) and follows up with a why question (‘Since it belonged to you together, why did she ask you to write an IOU?’). This implies a challenge to the truthfulness of the previous response and doubt about the defendant’s honesty, which also retroactively indicates that line 3 does not merely initiate a repair, but also projects a challenge to its truthfulness. The interrupted elaboration attempt by the defendant in response to the repeat indicates his orientation to the repeat as a clarification-seeking repair. However, that interpretation cannot be based on the prosodic features of the repetition, which indicate a neutral statement. Nevertheless, the prosecutor’s disaffiliation is revealed in the lexical feature (‘after all’) in line 1 and the interruption of line 4. This illuminates the defendant’s reliance on various linguistic resources, beyond prosody, for stance interpretation, which is further explored in Sect. 4. Excerpt 12 is a more obvious example to show how a judge conceals his stance in repetition.

Fig. 13

The pitch trace of the original saying in line 2 of Excerpt 11

Fig. 14

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 11

Excerpt 12:
1.	审:	打	得	严重	你们	想	干		什么?
	J:	beat	DE	severely	you	want	do		what
	‘(After you) beat (him) to severe injury, what did you want to do?’
2.	被: →	就	往	人多	的	地方	送		嘛
	D:	just	toward	populous	PRT	place	send		PRT
	‘(We) just sent (him) to a place with many people.’
3.	审:⇉	往	人多	的	地方	送(1 s)
	J:	toward	populous	PRT	place	send
	那		刚才	公诉人	也	问了,
	in that case		just now	prosecutor	also	ask-PST
	你们		敲-	到了	地方	以后,
	you		knock-	arrive-PST	place	after
	敲	那个(.)	附近的	居民的	房门	了	没有?
	knock	that	nearby	reidential	door	PST	no
	‘(You) sent him to a place with many people. (1 s) Just now the prosecutor also asked, did you knock- after you got to the place, did you knock the door of (.) nearby residences?’
4.	被:	没有	敲
	D:	not	knock
	‘(We) didn’t knock.’
5.	审:	没有	敲,	那么		你	[既然]
	J:	not	knock	in that case		you	since
	‘(You) didn’t knock, in that case you [since]’
6.	被:						[inaudible]
7.	审:	既然	你	想	对	被害人	进行		施救
	J:	since	you	want	to	victim	conduct		save
	为什么	不	敲(.)	这个	居民的		房子 ?
	why	not	knock	this	residential		house
	‘Since you wanted to save the victim, why not knock(.) on the door?’

The repeat in line 3 is, at a surface level, a neutral registering receipt and is articulated with a relatively flat pitch trace (Fig. 15). Then there is a one-second pause, which might be the judge waiting for the defendant to give a confirmation, but the defendant does not provide one, as he might be orienting to it as registering and thus not worthy of a response, given the prosodic features and the fact that the issue was discussed earlier when he was questioned by the prosecutor. The follow-up question continues to seem harmless and neutral (after you got to the place, did you knock the door of (.) nearby residences?). And a minimal response is given without any attempt for elaboration. The challenge to the response is not shown until line 5 where there is another repeat and immediately afterwards a follow-up question ((You) didn’t knock, in that case you [since]). Then there is overlapping talk between the judge and the defendant, which indicates that the defendant detects the disaffiliation at that moment. The judge’s negative stance is not fully displayed until line 7 where ‘既然(since)’ is stressed before a follow-up why-question (Since you wanted to save the victim, why not knock(.) on the door?).

Fig. 15

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 12

This section shows that it is easier to discover a negative stance conveyed through a question-intoned repetition, but, in terms of declarative repetition, prosodic features are not always a reliable cue to distinguish between a neutral repeat and a negatively-valenced repeat. As a result, the defendant might orient to both kinds of repeat as simply registering or confirmation-seeking. However, as shown in both Excerpts 11 and 12, a few turns later the prosecutor’s and the judge’s disaffiliation is revealed in a challenging why-question. The emphasised ‘既然(since)’-prefaced sentence before the question shows that the pre-sequence of the turn serves to build up towards a powerful presentation of a disaffiliation. Therefore, we would argue that the non-distinguishing prosodic feature of different functions of repeats might be strategically used by the prosecutors and judges to establish a prerequisite for their ensuing challenge. In this sense, they intentionally conceal their stance in the repetition. If there is no need for such establishment beforehand, a more emotional repetition can be observed as illustrated with the challenge-implicated turn-initial repeats in the last section (Excerpts 6 and 7) and the following excerpt, which displays a stand-alone declarative repeat featuring a wide pitch range.

Excerpt 13:

1.

公:

你

没有

敲

过

别人的

门

P:

you

not

knock

ASP

others’

door

怎么

知道

周围

一个

人

都

没有

呢 ?

how

know

around

one

person

all

not

Q

‘You didn’t knock any of the doors. How did you know there wasn’t a person around?’

2.

被:→

(3s)

我们

又

不

熟悉

D:

we

again

not

familiar

‘(3s) We were not familiar.’

3.

公:⇉

你

不

熟悉(1 s)

P:

you

not

familiar

有

一个

人

现在(.)

被

你

用

刀,

have

one

person

now

by

you

use

knife

脖子

上面

左

右

都

割了

刀

neck

on

left

right

both

cut-PST

knife

躺

在

屋子

里面

的

地上

lie

at

house

inside

PRT

ground-on

你

觉得

她

还

有

心跳,

还

没有

死

you

think

she

still

have

heartbeat

still

not

dead

这个

时候

因为

不

熟悉

this

time

because

not

familiar

所以

没有

找

人

救

助

她

?

so

not

find

person

save

help

her

‘You (were) not familiar (1 s) now (.) there’s a person, both sides of her neck were cut by you. She was lying on the ground in the room. You thought she still had a heartbeat, still not dead. At that moment, because you were not familiar, so you didn’t ask anyone to help save her?’

In Excerpt 13, the challenge goes beyond the veracity or credibility of a response to touch upon moral unacceptability. The defendant claims that he did not ask the neighbours to help save the victim after stabbing her because he was unfamiliar with them. The prosecutor repeats the response, and before she further points out the unacceptability of the response, there is a one-second pause. But the defendant does not give a confirmation or an explanation. Then the prosecutor has a long turn to challenge this response. With a description of the victim’s dying situation, and by formulating ‘not familiar’ as the reason for not asking for help, the prosecutor illustrates the unacceptability of his response. By presenting the logic in a question (because you were not familiar, so you didn’t ask anyone to help save her?), the prosecutor is inviting the defendant to recognise the absurdity of his own behaviour. The repetition is emotional, which can be seen in the wide pitch range of around 200 Hz (Fig. 16) and the higher pitch of ‘不(not)’, which demonstrates the challenge to the negativity expressed by the defendant. As no prerequisite is required to launch the challenge, the repetition explicitly conveys the prosecutor’s stance.

Fig. 16

The pitch trace of the repetition in line 3 of Excerpt 13

4 Lexicogrammar and Multimodal Cues Contribute to Stance Interpretation

As shown in the previous section, with stand-alone repeats, the questioner could take advantage of prosody to pass off a negatively-valenced repeat as a neutral registering repeat before revealing their disaffiliation. Therefore, prosody is not always a reliable cue to recognise the function of a repeat. However, defendants are sensitive to lexicogrammar and multimodal cues even when the turn cooccurs with misleading prosodic features as shown in Excerpts 14, 15 and 16, where the repeats feature the common registering pitch trace.

Excerpt 14:

1.

公:

你的

棍子

哪

来

的

呀?

(.)木棍

P:

your

stick

where

come

PRT

PRT

stick

‘Where did you get your stick? (.)the stick.’

2.

被:→

木棍

是

哪

来

的,

说真的

我

真的

不

知道 =

D:

stick

be

where

come

PRT

honestly

I

really

not

know

‘Where I got the stick, honestly, I really don’t know. = ’

3.

公:⇉

= 也

不

知道

=

P:

also

not

know

‘ = (You) also don’t know. = ’

4.

被:

= 就是

当时

混乱中

我

就

不

知道

怎么

就

拿

了

一个

D:

that is

at the time

in chaos

I

just

not

know

how

just

get

PST

one

‘ = That is, at the time, in chaos, I just didn’t know how I just got one.’

5.

公:

不

符合

常理

啊,

解释

不通

啊

P:

no

comply with

common sense

PRT

explain

nonsense

PRT

‘It goes against common sense. That doesn’t make sense.’

6.

被:

但是

事实

就

是

这样

的

就

是

说

D:

but

fact

just

be

this

PRT

just

be

say

‘But that is the fact.’

In line 3, the prosecutor registers that the defendant did not know where he got the stick, but in the repetition, he makes a minor modification by adding ‘也(also)’ at the beginning, which emphasises the defendant’s lack of first-hand knowledge even though he is the person using the stick. The defendant seems to sense the dissatisfaction in the prosecutor’s repeat and ‘latches’ onto the repetition to give an account (‘in chaos’). Then in line 5, the prosecutor reveals his true attitude towards the non-answer response by saying explicitly: ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ This shows that the defendant is right in orienting to the repetition as negatively valenced. In terms of prosody, the repeat features a flat pitch trace just like a registering repeat. Therefore, the expression of doubt and disbelief does not materialise in the prosody, but with the word ‘也(also)’, which makes the repeat highly evaluative. And the defendant’s response shows that the negative stance is identified by the recipient despite the calm prosody.

Multimodal cues are also important resources for the defendant to figure out the questioner’s stance. As the Chinese legal system is essentially a civil law legal system and institutional participants sit when they do the questioning, they do not generally use as many non-linguistic resources as their counterparts in Anglo-American courtrooms [36]. Though very few facial expressions or posture can be captured in the trial videos, gaze direction and its shift are observable and are found to be a major multimodal cue. Kendon [9] proposes three main functions of gaze: a regulatory function to influence turn taking, a monitoring function to gather information about the recipient’s attentional state, facial displays, etc., and an expressive function to construct affiliative and disaffiliative actions. Haddington [7] argues that interactants can use mutual gaze as a resource to display convergent positions and gaze aversion for divergent positions. Similarly, Kendrick and Holler [10] discuss gaze direction as a signal of response preference in conversation. Therefore, gaze can contribute to conveying and detecting a speaker’s stance. In this research, we find that gaze shift is an important multimodal cue that influences the interaction when prosody does not give a clue regarding the questioner’s stance as shown in the following interaction.

Excerpt 15:
1.	审:	刀    呢?    后来	去	哪里	了 ?
	J:	knife  Q    later	go	where	PST
	‘What about the knife? Where was it afterwards?’
2.	被:→	刀(.)	不	记得	了
	D:	knife	not	remember	CRS
	‘The knife(.) (I) don’t remember.’
3.	审:⇉	不	记得	了 =
	J:	not	remember	CRS
	‘(You) don’t remember.=’
	(Lowering the head to look at the paper on the table, moving the right hand on the table with a pen in the hand, ready to write something)
4.	被:=	好像	就	放	在	房子	哪里	了	吧
	D:	seem	just	put	in	house	where	PST	PRT
	‘=Perhaps it was just left somewhere in the house.’

The defendant gives a non-answer response to the question in line 1. His response is repeated by the judge without any modification, and the repeat also sounds like a registering repeat. But when the judge repeats, she lowers her head to look at the paper on the table, moving her right hand on the table with a pen in her hand, ready to write something. We identify the look as a ‘cut-off gaze’, ‘a particular gaze shift that occurs as a response to a coparticipant stance and precedes a verbal display of divergent stance’ [7]. Though no explicit expression of divergent stance follows, the defendant interprets the gaze aversion as a ‘sign of trouble’ [10] and changes his non-answer response to an actual response. The response in line 4 retroactively suggests that the defendant resorts to ‘not remember’ (line 2) as a strategy to refuse to provide key information. A similar phenomenon is observed in Excerpt 16 where both lexicogrammar and multimodal cues work together for the stance interpretation.

Excerpt 16:

1.

公:

手机

呢 ?

P:

phone

Q

‘What about the phone?’

2.

被: →

手机

跟

我

手机

放

在

一起

了,

D:

phone

with

my

phone

put

at

together

PST

我

> 顺便

拿走

了 <

I

conveniently

take away

PST

‘The phone was in the same place as my phone, I > took (it) away conveniently < .’

3.

公:⇉

你

就 (.)

一起

拿走

了

P:

you

so

together

take away

PST

‘So you (.) took (them) away together.’

(lowering the head)

4.

被:

其实

我

没有

心思

去

拿

她

这些,

D:

actually

I

no

thought

to

take

her

these

因为

她

手上

那么

多

我

都

没

要

她的,

没有

心思

because

her

hands

so

many

I

all

not

want

hers

no

thought

还有

她

手上

有

那个(.)

白金

钻石

戒指,

我

买

那个

6700

多,

also

her

hand

have

that

platinum

diamond

ring

I

buy

that

6700

more

我

没有

想

去

拿

她

东西

知道

吗

就

是

气愤

I

not

want

go

take

her

thing

know

Q

just

be

angry

(The prosecutor raises his head and looks at the defendant and then the defendant stops talking and looks down.)

‘Actually, I didn’t mean to take these. Because she had more things, which I didn’t take. I didn’t want to. She was wearing that (.) a platinum diamond ring. I bought that with over 6,700 yuan. I didn’t want to take her things, you know? I was just angry.’

After the prosecutor repeats the prior turn ‘So you (.) took (them) away together’, the defendant does not orient to it as confirmation-seeking or registering repeat. Instead, he accounts for his behaviour, which suggests his uptake of the repeat as implying doubt or disbelief. Such an interpretation cannot be attributable to the prosody of the declarative repetition, which indicates a statement. In the first saying by the defendant, he speeds up when he says ‘took (it) away conveniently’, which shows that he is aware of the behaviour being questionable. The repetition by the prosecutor adds an evaluative ‘就(so)’ and replaces ‘conveniently’ with ‘together’ not only to highlight that he took two cell phones away, but also to deny the convenience of doing it. Furthermore, after the repeat, the prosecutor lowers his head and looks down at his document on the desk. The defendant seems to interpret the gaze shift as a cue showing the prosecutor has a negative evaluation of his response and therefore, gives an elaborated account. Moreover, he does not stop defending himself until the prosecutor looks up at him.

This section argues that when prosody does not provide a clue about the institutional questioner’s stance, the defendant interprets a repetition based on lexicogrammar and multimodal cues if there are any. In addition, it shows that in the courtroom context, the institutional participants are implicit in conveying their stance with subtle ways such as minor modification in the repetition and gaze shift.

5 Conclusion

Prior studies associate the actions carried out by repeats with their accompanying prosody. However, this research shows that prosody is not necessarily the most important resource for the institutional participants to convey their stance, nor the most reliable cue for the recipients to interpret a repeat and its associated stance in Chinese criminal trials. Instead, the analysis finds that the institutional nature of the interaction makes the stance expression very subtle, though this research shows that Chinese judges are not just neutral arbitrators in a criminal trial and display disaffiliation in the questioning process.

The analysis of the turn-initial repeat shows that repeats in the third position can be used to register a receipt, display doubt, and convey challenge. Though prosodic features cannot distinguish the first two functions, the challenge-implicated repeat cooccurs with a wider pitch range. By comparison, questioners convey their stance more implicitly when they use stand-alone repeats. The analysis shows that it is difficult to assess the attitudes of the questioners towards a stand-alone repeat with a declarative intonation solely based on the prosodic features. Without distinguishing the function of a repeat prosodically, the questioner can effectively conceal their stance. This can be a questioning strategy to elicit confirmation from the defendant and build up towards an impactful question. In this sense, questioning in the courtroom is a form of ‘theatrics’ [17]. On the other hand, there are still lexicogrammar and multimodal cues that defendants can detect to assess the stance of their questioners. This research finds that minor modifications of the original saying in the repetition and gaze shift have an influence on the interaction between the questioners and the defendants. Other-repetition is, therefore, an important institutional resource that can be exploited to make questioning more effective in producing a prosecution or judicially powerful record.

Appendix 1: Transcription Conventions

Symbols in transcription	Meaning
=	Latched speech
[	Overlapping
-	Cut off of prior word or sound
/	Interruption
(.)	Micropause
(2s)	Lapsed time in second
Underlined	Stressed part
(cry)	Paralinguistic information
(inaudible)	Inaudible information
wor::d	Prolonged vowel or consonant
< word	A hurried start of a word
。word。	Syllables or words quieter than surrounding speech by the same speaker
.	Falling tone
?	Rising tone
,	Slightly rising intonation
> word <	Increased speaking rate
PST	Past tense marker
CRS	Currently relevant status
Q	A question particle
ASP	Aspectual marker
CONT	A continuous aspect marker indicating an ongoing action or state
PRT	A particle
DE	A grammatical particle used to indicate the degree or result of an action