Insincerity in lawyers' questioning strategies in Malawian criminal courtroom discourse

This paper introduces a new perspective on analysing courtroom insincerity by focusing on questions asked by lawyers in the Malawi criminal justice system. The study aimed at examining the linguistic tools of tracing insincerity in lawyers' questions; the varying degrees of insincerity in defence and prosecution lawyers and their rationale for making such choices. The study argues that courtroom setting is a war zone where different parties have divergent goals. Such encounters are much likely to yield higher chances of insincerity, which can be manifested in the questions lawyers ask. The analysis is based on data from four criminal cases, which were collected from the High Court of Malawi. My framework of analysing insincerity in questions examines the prescribed degrees of control that questions exert on the witnesses in relation to their productiveness. The findings indicate that, when examining witnesses, prosecutors exercise less insincerity while defence lawyers opt for questions with high insincerity. These imbalances in language use are enshrined in and supported by law in its statutes. The findings of this study have jurisprudential implications, especially in Africa which is internationally less represented in the studies of language and law.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a new perspective for analyzing insincerity in courtrooms, specifically focusing on questions asked by lawyers in the Malawi criminal justice system. The study examines the linguistic tools used by lawyers to trace insincerity and investigates the varying degrees of insincerity exhibited by defence and prosecution lawyers, as well as their reasoning behind such choices. The findings suggest that there is a higher likelihood of insincerity in courtroom settings, which can be observed in the questions asked by lawyers. Furthermore, the study highlights the differences in language use between prosecutors and defence lawyers, with the latter displaying higher levels of insincerity. These findings have significant jurisprudential implications, particularly in Africa where research on language and law is understudied.