1887
Volume 71, Issue 4
  • ISSN 0521-9744
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9668
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This corpus-driven study examines how court interpreters utilize Cantonese utterance particles (UPs) in sentence-initial positions within the bilingual discourse of Hong Kong’s courtrooms. By analyzing 57,145 utterances from five sexual assault trials, we find that interpreters systematically employ UPs to manage interactions in court. Notably, the particles () and () account for 84% of sentence-initial occurrences, highlighting their significance in this context. Statistical analysis reveals significant differences in UP usage patterns across different cases ( < .001, 2 = .878), suggesting the presence of intentional pragmatic strategies. The findings indicate that interpreters use UPs not only to regulate turn-taking but also to assert authority and adjust pragmatic force during witness examinations. This research enhances our understanding of the role of language in legal settings and emphasizes the importance of UPs in facilitating effective communication in bilingual courtroom environments.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/babel.24130.won
2025-02-18
2026-07-19
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Austin, John Langshaw
    1962How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Berk-Seligson, Susan
    1990The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. 2009Coerced Confessions: The Discourse of Bilingual Police Interrogations. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110213492
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110213492 [Google Scholar]
  4. 2017The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226329475.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226329475.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  5. Bhatia, Vijay. K.
    1993Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bourgerie, Dana Scott
    1987 “Particle of Uncertainty: A Discourse Approach to the Cantonese Final Particles.” MA thesis, Ohio State University.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Bourgerie, Dana Scott
    1990 “A Quantitative Study of Sociolinguistic Variation in Cantonese.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University.
  8. Bourgerie, Dana Scott
    1998 “Expanding the Scope of the Sentence-Final Position: Post-Posed Modals in Cantonese.” InStudies in Cantonese Linguistics, edited byStephen Matthews, 133–46. Hong Kong: Linguistic Society of Hong Kong.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson
    1987 “Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena.” InQuestions and Politeness, edited byEsther Goody, 56–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Chafe, Wallace L.
    1976 “Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View.” InSubject and Topic, edited byCharles Li, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Chan, Marjorie K. M.
    2002 “Chinese: Gender-Related Use of Sentence-Final Particles in Cantonese.” InGender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, vol.21, edited byMarlis Hellinger and Hadumod Bussman, 57–72. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 10.1075/impact.10.08cha
    https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.10.08cha [Google Scholar]
  12. Cheung, Andrew K. F.
    2014 “The Use of Reported Speech and the Perceived Neutrality of Court Interpreters.” Interpreting161: 191–208. 10.1075/intp.16.2.03che
    https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.16.2.03che [Google Scholar]
  13. Crystal, David
    1980A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. London: Andre Deutsch.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Eades, Diana
    2010Sociolinguistics and the Legal Process. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 10.21832/9781847692559
    https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847692559 [Google Scholar]
  15. Fowler, Yvonne
    1997 “The Courtroom Interpreter. Paragon and Intruder?” InThe Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community, edited bySilvana Carr, Roda Roberts, Aideen Dufour, and Dini Steyn, 191–200. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 10.1075/btl.19.20fow
    https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.19.20fow [Google Scholar]
  16. Fung, Roxanna Suk Yee
    2000 “Final Particles in Standard Cantonese: Semantic Extension and Pragmatic Inference.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University.
  17. Gibbons, John
    2003Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System. London: Continuum.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Hale, Sandra
    1997 “The Treatment of Register Variation in Court Interpreting.” The Translator31: 39–54. 10.1080/13556509.1997.10798987
    https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.1997.10798987 [Google Scholar]
  19. 2004The Discourse of Court Interpreting. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 10.1075/btl.52
    https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.52 [Google Scholar]
  20. Law Ann Yan Kei
    Law Ann Yan Kei 2002 “Cantonese Sentence Final Focus Particles and the CP Domain.” UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, edited byAd Neeleman and Reiko Vermeulen, 375–398.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Leung, Ester, and John Gibbons
    2009 “Interpreting Cantonese Utterance Final-Particles in Bilingual Courtroom Discourse.” Interpreting: International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting111: 190–215. 10.1075/intp.11.2.05leu
    https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.11.2.05leu [Google Scholar]
  22. Leung, Ester
    2005Legislation to Translation, From Translation to Interpretation: The Narrative of Sexual Offences in the Courtrooms of Hong Kong. Online Dataset. cpdb-arts.hkbu.edu.hk
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Leung, Wai Mun
    2009 “A study of The Cantonese Hearsay Particle Wo from a Tonal Perspective.” International Journal of Linguistics11: 1–14. 10.5296/ijl.v1i1.204
    https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v1i1.204 [Google Scholar]
  24. 2011 “A Study of Evidential Particles in Cantonese: The Case of wo3 and wo5.” The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics41: 29–52. 10.5750/bjll.v4i0.35
    https://doi.org/10.5750/bjll.v4i0.35 [Google Scholar]
  25. Li, Charles and Sandra Thompson
    1981A Functional Reference Grammar of Mandarin Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press. 10.1525/9780520352858
    https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520352858 [Google Scholar]
  26. Luke, Kang Kwong
    1990Utterance particles in Cantonese Conversation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 10.1075/pbns.9
    https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.9 [Google Scholar]
  27. Matthews, Stephen, and Virginia Yip
    2011Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Ng, Eva N. S.
    2013 “Who Is Speaking?: Interpreting the Voice of the Speaker in Court.” Interpreting in a Changing Landscape: Selected papers from Critical Link 6, edited byChristina Schäffner, Krzysztof Kredens, and Yvonne Fowler, 249–266. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 10.1075/btl.109.19ng
    https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.109.19ng [Google Scholar]
  29. Searle, John R.
    1969Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139173438
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 [Google Scholar]
  30. Searle, John R., and Daniel Vanderveken
    1985Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Solan, Lawrence, and Peter Meijes Tiersma
    2005Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Wadensjö, Cecilia
    2013Interpreting as Interaction. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Wakefield, John C.
    2011a “The English Equivalents of Cantonese Sentence-Final Particles: A Contrastive Analysis.” Ph.D. diss., Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.
  34. 2011b “Disentangling the Meanings of Two Cantonese Evidential Particles.” Chinese Language and Discourse21: 250–293. 10.1075/cld.2.2.05wak
    https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.2.2.05wak [Google Scholar]
  35. Wong, Cecilia Lok Yee
    2023 “A Corpus-Based Study of Interpreters’ Non-Renditions and Power Manifestations in Courtrooms of Hong Kong.” InCorpora in Interpreting Studies: East Asian Perspectives, edited byAndrew K. F. Cheung, Kanglong Liu, and Riccardo Moretto, 161–180. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/babel.24130.won
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/babel.24130.won
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error