Recontextualization and production roles

In a courtroom setting, a witness who is not a native speaker of the official language receives the services of a court interpreter, and the trial is transcribed by court reporters. In other words, once an utterance is produced by the witness, it undergoes two kinds of recontextualization involved in this process: it is 1) interpreted by the interpreter, and 2) recorded by the transcriptionist. This study investigates court transcripts of trials involving non-native witnesses and analyzes the shift of production roles when their utterance is interpreted and transcribed utilizing Goffman’s (1979) participation framework. The study found that the court transcripts represented the witnesses with inconsistency and vagueness, which blurs the animator and the author of the utterance at each phase, while holding the witness as the principal. In legal settings, this could lead to the witness being held accountable for the inconsistency rooted in the recontextualizations.