The Force of Questioning and Pragmatic Strategies in Courtroom Interrogation: A Conversation Analysis

This is a conversation analysis study on courtroom communication. This study aims to investigate how the forces of question (information seeking and confirmation seeking) were achieved and the pragmatic strategies, particularly repetition, and reformulation, used by the prosecutor during a cross-examination of the defendant in an Indonesian murder case; a courtroom trial of a cyanide poisoning case considered weak due to a lack of sufficient evidence against the defendant. The data was obtained from the Kompas TV YouTube Channel and was transcribed using Jefferson’s (2004) technique of transcription. This study employed a descriptive qualitative method to discover the force of questions and pragmatic strategies. The data was analyzed by adapting Gibbons’ (2003) and Archer's (2005) classification of question form and question force. The results demonstrate both information-seeking and confirmation-seeking questions were used by the prosecutor. Gibbons’ (2003) repetition and reformulation strategies were used to further investigate the pragmatic strategies. The finding shows pragmatic strategies, particularly repetition, and reformulation, were also evidenced in the lines of questioning. The patterns of the findings indicate that the prosecutor attempted to portray the defendant’s unreliability and untrustworthiness in court. These findings also implicate that the existence of the strict rules of courtroom communication and power imbalance in court allows the prosecutor to influence the defendant’s response.


INTRODUCTION
Conversation analysis is the study of conversation in real-world settings, including both verbal and nonverbal cues, for thoroughly characterizing the format of impromptu, spontaneously occurring discussions, that is, to characterize the sequentially, structure, and orderliness of encounter (Liddicoat, 2007;Sidnell, 2010).This includes interaction in the courtroom.Courtroom interaction is different from ordinary everyday conversation where anyone involved can participate freely without any strict rules.In fact, communication in the courtroom is limited to the regulations of the institutional talk (Berger & Luckmann, 1966;Clarks, 1996).Hence, the contribution of participants in the interaction is also strictly dependent on their roles in the courtroom.Likewise, the form of communication is also restricted by the participants' roles and the institutional rules (Archer, 2005;Cotteril, 2003).During cross-examination or examination-in-chief, the only permitted means of expression is question and answer.Given the distinctive form of communication, an average person who is not employed by this institution could become perplexed if he has to represent himself in court.In such a case, the judge would adjust his role to establish the appropriate support for the incompetent person (Tkačuková, 2015).Questioning in court is more direct compared to other contexts of interrogation, such as an interview on television (Gnisci & Pace, 2016), or a job interview, as the main function of legal questioning is to uncover the truth (Sliedrecht et al., 2016).
These restrictions allow power imbalance to surface in courtroom communication (Leung & Durant, 2018).During the examination, the most powerful party is the judge for they have the power to allow or to decline a line of questioning (Hutauruk et al., 2022;Matoesian, 2018), while the least powerful party is the examined party as their roles only allow them to answer the examiner's questions (Heffer, 2005).However, even though the examiners have more power than the examined party, they do not have complete control over the answers provided by the examined party (Cotteril, 2003).They nevertheless possess the ability to influence the investigated party's response to match their preferred version (Chen and Zhang, 2022;Maley & Fahey, 1991;Njeri et al., 2018), which is advantageous to the examining party, especially in a weak case with insufficient evidence.Word choice is also impacted by the role of the participant in courtroom communication; the more powerful party will likely use words to assert authority (Szczyrbak, 2016).
Courtroom questioning is classified into two functions, namely information seeking and confirmation seeking (Archer, 2005;Gibbons, 2003).Gibbons (2003) and Archer (2005) argue that different question types, such as those that ask for narrow or broad answers, may exert varying influences on the response.This includes portraying blame on a certain party through questioning (Aronsson, 2018) or rejecting the other party's arguments (Tracy & Reijven, 2023) to suit their desired version of events.A study conducted by Lubis et al. (2023) discovers seven types of questions formulated by the judge in a Rhode Island courtroom.There are appropriate yes/no questions, probing questions, inappropriate closed yes/no questions, open questions, opinions or statements, leading questions, and multiple questions.However, this study does not discuss the function of each question type.
A similar investigation conducted by Hutauruk et al. (2022) uncovers the pattern of speech function formulated by the judge in an Indonesian courtroom, that is WH question types.Hutauruk et al. (2022) conclude that the function of courtroom questioning is to seek information from the defendant/witness.However, this study is limited to investigating the speech functions utilized by the judge only; there is no further investigation into the speech functions used by the cross-examiners.Similar to the study by Hutauruk et al. (2022), Lubis et al. (2023) also analyze questions and responses only.In a different study, Chang (2004) argues that the majority of linguistic research conducted in court contexts, particularly those about questioning, has their limits.The fact that inquiries are examined as a single statement rather than as a series of talks is one of the constraints.Chang's (2004) perspective is in opposition to Gibbons' (2013) who thinks it is important to examine each question form to determine the signals that are concealed therein.
In order to get around this limitation, this present study analyzes the lines of inquiry by grouping them according to the types of questions and uncovers the force of the questions.It investigates a courtroom examination of the cyanide poisoning case in Indonesia, which is supposedly a weak case due to insufficient evidence against the defendant (Budiari, 2016).In other words, there was a lack of key evidence to prove the defendant guilty.Therefore, in order to achieve the prosecutor's desired version, which is proving the defendant guilty, the prosecutor was left with the only 'weapon' (Najari et al., 2021), that is to question the defendant.Hence, employing an appropriate questioning strategy was crucial.Najari et al. (2022) investigate how pragmatic strategies used in the courtroom influence the formulation of question types.Pragmatic strategies can also aim to undermine the statements given by the layperson (Wau, 2016) as questions are considered discourse rather than grammatical components (Aina & Anowu, 2023).Hence, it is crucial to use the right questioning strategy.Addressing this issue is imperative as it is expected to guide legal professionals to develop effective questioning strategies in the courtroom.
However, studies on Indonesian courtroom communication are still limited (Jahara et al., 2022).In other words, courtroom interaction has been explored in various studies, but only a little has been explored in Indonesian courtrooms.This research is novel in its examination of how prosecutors in Indonesian courtrooms use questioning strategies to achieve persuasive effects in cases.Unlike prior studies that often treat questions in isolation, this research analyzes them as part of a sequential discourse, considering both their types and pragmatic strategies.By doing so, it addresses the gap in the literature on Indonesian courtroom communication and provides insights into how prosecutors can manipulate questioning to influence defendants' responses, thus contributing valuable knowledge to the field of legal linguistics.Consequently, two research questions are formulated as follows: 1.How were the forces of questions achieved by the prosecutor during a crossexamination of the defendant?2. What are the pragmatic strategies used by the prosecutor during crossexamination of the defendant?Employing Gibbons' ( 2003) and Archer's (2005) classification of function (force) of question, this study aims to find out how the force of questions was achieved and the pragmatic strategies used by the prosecutor when cross-examining the defendant.

Conversation Analysis
Conversation analysis (CA) was first developed in the late 1960s and 1970s by three influential sociologists, namely Emanuel Schegloff, Harvey Sacks, and Gail Jefferson (Liddicoat, 2007;Sidnell, 2010).Originally, CA only focused on verbal communication, but recently it has expanded to investigate other forms of communication, such as video chats, text messages, online counseling, and more.Some features of conversation explored in CA include turn-taking, adjacency pairs, topic management, opening and closing, repairs, formulation or re-formulation, and questions.
Turn-taking involves investigating the different ways participants contribute to the conversation.This includes coordinating cues to determine whose turn it is to speak (Skantze, 2021).For instance, while one participant is speaking, the other participant reads cues to determine when and about what he could start to speak.Meanwhile, adjacency pairs study logically connected sequences.It refers to the standard forms of paired utterances, including greeting-greeting, question-answer, etc. (Al-Mamoory & Al-Ghizzy, 2023).Next is topic management, which means studying how participants introduce new topics and how they shift topics.Topic management focuses on approaches to starting, pursuing, maintaining, shifting, and ending topics (Wong & Waring, 2020).
Another feature discussed in conversation analysis is opening and closing, which investigates how conversations are initiated and concluded.Next is repair, which means confirming, replacing, or extending information discussed earlier in the interaction.Repair is implemented when one realizes that troubles in understanding the conversation occur (Barnes, 2020).Following this, formulation or re-formulation is another feature investigated in conversation analysis.Formulation or reformulation occurs when a speaker creates a restatement by reframing a statement while largely maintaining its semantic meaning (Svennevig, 2023).The last aspect of conversation analysis is questions, which studies questioning.Questioning and question design can generate interpersonal function on a spectrum from neutral to suggesting blame and criticism (Kaur, 2022).Thus, this study focuses only on questions and the pragmatic strategies (re-formulation and repetition) of courtroom interaction during the cross-examination of the defendant.

Courtroom Questionings
The contribution of participants in courtroom communication is determined by their roles (Archer, 2005;Cotteril, 2003).The primary mode of courtroom communication during examination is conveyed through a series of questions and answers.Lawyers or prosecutors need to utilize questions to construct their implied arguments (Heritage, 2010).Hence, prosecutors or lawyers must formulate the right type of questions to make a strong argument.Purnanto et al. (2013) classify four types of questions observed in a Surakarta court, adapted from Tsui (1992), namely WH-questions, yes/no questions, questions with two possible answers, and rhetorical questions.However, despite being conducted in an Indonesian court, Purnanto et al.'s (2013) study does not discuss or classify the question particles in Bahasa Indonesia, such as kah, kan, ya, and kok.On the other hand, Arifin (1997) found and classified all the aforementioned question particles in his study on questions and answers in Indonesian courtrooms as shown in Table 1.
Table 1.Question particles in Bahasa Indonesia (Arifin, 1997).Furthermore, the common question types include WH-interrogative, negative WH-, indirect WH-interrogative, polar interrogative, negatively framed polar, indirect polar, indirect negative polar, disjunctive interrogative, indirect disjunctive, declarative question, tag question, echo question, elliptical question, rhetorical question, questions in the narrative, multiple interrogative, and problematic question (Archer, 2005).Gibbons (2003) argues that classifying question types is crucial as a means to acknowledge the force of the questions and to determine what kind of response the speaker seeks.Gibbons (2003) and Archer (2005) suggest that questions have two main functions, namely information seeking and confirmation seeking.Different question types deliver different functions as displayed in Table 2. Confirmation-seeking questions include Polar interrogative, declarative interrogative, echo question, elliptical question, multiple questions, question particle ya, and question particle benar.Polar interrogatives are yes-no questions.In Bahasa Indonesia, the question particle kah is classified as a polar interrogative.Additionally, declarative interrogative is structurally a statement form but intended as a question.Moreover, an echo question seeks clarification of what someone else mentioned before.An elliptical question is grammatically incomplete.Additionally, a multiple question accommodates two or more questions.Lastly, question particle ya means 'yes', while question particle benar means 'is it correct?'

The Force of Questions in Court
In addition to confirmation-seeking questions, information-seeking questions include WH-question, which also includes question particle kok and narrative questions.A WH question is an interrogative that employs a WH-feature at the beginning of the question, while a narrative question means requesting a narrative about an event.Lastly, a disjunctive interrogative, which means a tag question, can serve as both a confirmation and information-seeking function.

Pragmatic Strategies
According to Leech (2014), pragmatics is the study of the meanings that words take on in different contexts.Huang (2007) defines pragmatics as the systemic analysis of meaning resulting from or influenced by language use.Gibbons (2003) believes pragmatic strategies are often used by law enforcement, especially in court, to generate their desired version of events.Gibbons categorizes pragmatic strategies into two functions: person-targeted, which aims at influencing how the person giving testimony is perceived, and idea-targeted, which seeks to affect how events are represented as sequences.
This present study focuses solely on idea-targeted strategies, which are achieved through repetition and reformulation of the questions.Reformulation involves revising or repeating how we deliver information using different linguistic forms (Wilson, 2018).Wilson argues that repetition and reformulation are crucial to assure mutual understanding among parties.Chiang and Mi (2011) believe that reformulation could also scaffold students' learning of a foreign language to achieve mutual understanding between teacher and student.Meanwhile, the primary function of repetition and reformulation in court is to emphasize the desired message (Maley & Fahey, 1991).

METHODS
This study employed a descriptive-qualitative research design.Dörnyei (2007) discusses the objective of qualitative study is to explain natural occurrences as they are.The purposeful sampling technique was implemented to collect the data.Creswell (2012) argues that purposeful sampling involves intentionally selecting the subject of the research to gain a deeper understanding of the main phenomenon being investigated.
The main phenomenon discussed in this study is question and answer in the courtroom setting.Hence, a video showcasing a prosecutor cross-examining the defendant in a murder case using cyanide poison was selected due to its distinctive context as this was a high-profile case and key evidence was absent.The data are drawn from a video uploaded on an Indonesian television company's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V3DwL9NaT0).The duration of the video is 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 30 seconds.The video was live-streamed and archived on the YouTube channel, which is accessible for the public to watch online and download.The video was transcribed using Jefferson's (2004) techniques of data transcription.Afterward, the transcription was translated into English since the trial was originally conducted in Bahasa Indonesia.
To analyze the data, this study implemented conversation analysis focusing on questions and formulation or re-formulation.The conversation analysis used in this study centered on institutional communication, particularly in a legal setting.The data was categorized based on the adaptation of Gibbons' ( 2003) and Archer's (2005) classification of question types and functions as displayed in Table 2.

RESULTS
The results of this study are presented in two sections: the force of questions and the pragmatic strategies.

The Force of Question
In this subsection, the data are displayed in Table 3 and interpreted and discussed only regarding the main messages that the prosecutor conveyed through the lines of questioning.The force of questions formulated by the prosecutor during the cross-examination of the defendant is displayed in Table 3. Table 3 displays that the number of question types aiming to seek confirmation is greater than those seeking information.As also indicated in the literature review section, disjunctive questions could function as both confirmation and informationseeking.The following is an example of such a question type, where P represents the prosecutor and D represents the defendant.
Extract 1 P : Apakah anda liat ada banyak meja yang ko↑so:ng (.) a:tau itu [semua terisi:?] 'Were there a lot of empty tables or they were all full?' D : [saya tidak perhatikan] 'I didn't pay attention.'The extract demonstrates an example of disjunctive questions formulated by the prosecutor (P) to the defendant (D).In this example, the prosecutor attempted to interrogation: A conversation analysis | 1037 obtain confirmation as well as information from the defendant regarding the situation at the café upon her arrival.The only distinction between these two contexts is that the prosecutor sought to ascertain the defendant's awareness of the situation in the café upon her arrival (confirmation-seeking) and attempted to gather information about the situation of the café itself.The following is the extended version of the lines of questioning.
Extract 2 P : Apakah anda liat ada banyak meja yang ko↑so:ng (.) a:tau itu [semua terisi:?]'Were there a lot of empty tables or they were full?' D : [saya tidak perhatikan] 'I didn't pay attention.'P : Tidak perhatikan?= 'Didn't pay attention?' D : = tidak perhatikan.'Didn't pay attention.'P : Terus (.) a:nda dapat posisi meja di ↑(.) mana?'So where is the loction of the table?' D : Yang ditunjukkan mba (.) Sindy.'The one that was pointed out by Sindy.' P : Ya:ng di: tunjukkan?'The one that was pointed out?' D : Hu um P : Dalam keterangannya: saksi Sindy mengatakan bahwa (.) dia akhirnya ke meja 54 (.)  From Extract 2, it is evident that the prosecutor wanted to compare the defendant's testimony to that of an earlier witness.As the prosecutor sought information regarding the defendant's awareness of the café's situation, they also sought confirmation from the defendant to obtain their desired version of events, namely that the café was not full at that time.Unfortunately, the outcome contradicted their preferred version of events.The situational context here is that the table where they ended up sitting had restricted visibility from the CCTV camera.Consequently, the CCTV footage did not help uncover who put cyanide in the victim's coffee.
Hence, using WH interrogatives, the prosecutor continued seeking information regarding who chose the table, to which the defendant replied that her friend Sindy did.Before proceeding to rephrase a witness' statement that conflicted with the defendant's testimony, the prosecutor sought her final assurance, to which she consistently responded.However, when questioned about her view of the witness's assertion, the defendant assertively declared it as untrue.
Furthermore, the prosecutor made an effort to imply to the court that the defendant's testimony was unreliable because the court had been presented with two distinct accounts of the incident in question, as mentioned above.The prosecutor contrasted the defendant's testimony with CCTV footage in Excerpt 3.
Extract 3 P : Pada saat itu apakah (.) balik dari: (.) tempa:t pembayaran sampai ke: meja (.) anda sempat melakukan telpon?atau (.) u:m whatsapp?atau sms? ke siapa?'At the time you were walking back to your table from the counter, were you on the phone?Or sending WhatsApp messages?Or text messages?To who?' D : U:m (.) saya si↑h (.) sebenarnya saya (.) 'I think I was.' Kayaknya saya telpon.'I think I was on the phone.'Iya saya telpo:n.'Yes I was on the phone.'Saya memakai telpo:n dan saya pake WA juga: 'I was on WhatsApp, too.P : Jadi ↑ ya:ng pada saat ini apakah terlihat anda sedang menelfon pada di gambar ini? 'So at this point, do you see that you were on the phone on this screen?'D : U:m sepertinya dari: CCTV tersebut tidak terlihat (.) tapi saya tidak tau kenapa.'It doesn't look like I was on the phone from the CCTV footage, but I don't know why.' Excerpt 3 reveals that the prosecutor asked the defendant twice to confirm whether she had been talking on the phone as she made her way from the counter to her table, to which she assured that she was on the phone.The prosecutor then played a clip from the CCTV camera that captured the exact moment, which further contradicted her testimony.
Both of the aforementioned excerpts follow a similar line of questioning, in which the examining party first requests information from the defendant before challenging the testimony given by the defendant by contrasting it with the evidence or testimony previously provided by a witness.However, the following excerpt follows a somewhat different pattern.The examining party skipped the portion where he asked the defendant for confirmation and went straight to the part where he asked for information.
'Yes, you mean just one little jump?Let's rewind a little bit.' Itu yang anda bilang bergegas?'Are you saying this is being in a hurry?' The victim had already consumed the toxic coffee and begun to feel uneasy, which sets the context for the questions above.As a result, the defendant went to the bar to obtain water for the victim.The excerpt reveals that the prosecutor sought information about whether the defendant was in a hurry when she went to get the water while playing the CCTV footage.The defendant confirmed she was in a hurry, which again contrasted with the evidence.Additionally, the prosecutor made light of the inconsistency between the defendant's testimony and the evidence by likening her quick trip to the bar to her earlier testimony of hustling.This excerpt demonstrates that even though the pattern of inquiry differs slightly from the ones previously shown, the examining party was nonetheless successful in conveying the unreliability of the defendant's testimony.

Pragmatic Strategies
This section displays pragmatic strategies, focusing solely on repetition and reformulation found during the cross-examination of the defendant.As repetition and reformulation occurred in the same sequence of questioning, the data is displayed and explained in one subsection as follows.

Repetition and reformulation
Excerpt 5 illustrates an example of repetition and reformulation conducted by the prosecutor during the cross-examination of the defendant.
Extract 5 P : [loh] tapi (.) ini (.) 'But this.' Dengan sadar anda katakan bahwa memang itu dipindahkan dari atas meja sebelum um kopi itu dating.'Was consciously stated by you that you moved (the paper bag) from the table before the coffee arrived.Were you conscious at the time?' Anda sadar pada saat itu?= 'Are you conscious at the time?' D : =pada saat itu (.) itu yang saya katakana.'At the time, that was what I stated.' Keterangan saya, 'My statement.'P : Saya tanyakan anda sada:r tidak pada saat anda mengatakan ini? 'What I was asking was if you were conscious or not when stated this?' D : Sadar.'Conscious.' The prosecutor questioned the defendant in this clip about whether she had moved the paper bag before the poisoned coffee arrived.The defendant replied that she could not recall doing so.Her testimony differed from the statement she made in the police report.Initially, the prosecutor asked the defendant to confirm whether she was aware when filing the police report.However, the prosecutor was not satisfied with the defendant's initial response.Hence, he asked the same question again, and the defendant's response aligned with the prosecutor's favored version, indicating that she was aware when she stated to the police investigator, which was inconsistent with her initial statement.Following this, more questions were asked, as shown in Extract 6.The excerpt demonstrates how the prosecutor rephrased the defense's claim that the defendant recalled two distinct accounts of the same incident on two separate occasions.This line of questioning illustrates the examining party's attempt to create the impression that the defendant was fully conscious when she initially provided her statement to the investigator and that she presented a different version in court, thereby leading the prosecutor to question the consistency of the defendant's testimony.The examining party not only questioned the defendant's consistency in testifying on two distinct occasions but also questioned her testimony during two different questioning sequences during his examination.Extract 7 provides an illustration.
Extract 7 P : Cairan yang seperti susu (.) apakah ada es? 'The liquid that looks like milk, was there any ice?' D : [u:m] 'Um.' P : [di gelas] bening itu?= 'In the clear glass?' D : =saya tidak perhatikan kalau es nya.'I didn't pay attention.' During this line of questioning, the examining party asked the defendant if she noticed any ice in the glass containing the toxic coffee.The defendant responded that she couldn't determine whether there was ice or not.Subsequently, the prosecutor shifted focus to questioning regarding the cup placed on top of the transparent glass.However, the prosecutor abruptly returned to the topic of ice.He inquired about the ice once more, but in a different manner.The illustration is shown in Extract 8.
Extract 8 P : E:s nya sendiri itu (.) u:m seberapa banyak?'How much was the ice?' D : (.) saya tidak memperhatikan [es nya(…)] 'I didn't pay attention to the ice.' P : [tidak memperhatikan es nya ya] 'Didn't pay attention to the ice.' The prosecutor had previously received confirmation from the defendant that she hadn't paid attention to the ice in the earlier lines of questioning (as shown in Extract 7).In other words, the prosecutor was already aware that the defendant could not determine whether the transparent glass contained ice.However, the fact that the prosecutor asked the same question differently indicates an attempt to challenge the defendant's consistency once more.Despite a momentary hesitation, the defendant provided a coherent response to the question this time.Therefore, the implication made by the examining party in these lines of questioning was unsuccessful.

DISCUSSION
As Gibbons (2003) and Archer (2005) classify the functions of questions as confirmation-seeking and information-seeking, the results obtained show that during cross-examination, the prosecutor generated both functions.The questions are not displayed and analyzed individually, but rather in a sequence, as Chang (2004) contends that examining the meaning of questions should be done by analyzing a line of inquiry rather than just analyzing each different form of question.In other words, to analyze the function of questions, one must analyze the whole sequence of questioning to take into account the situational context of the questions.
As the results displayed in the last section show, a noticeable pattern of questioning was found during the cross-examination of the defendant.Such a pattern is that the prosecutor sought information first from the defendant, which only then got countered with other witnesses' statements or evidence, which functions as confirmation-seeking. On another occasion, the prosecutor went straight with confirmation-seeking; the defendant's testimony was confronted with CCTV footage, which is inconsistent.These occasions prove that the prosecutor had the power to portray the unreliability of the defendant's testimony and the defendant's judgment of a certain situation.
The results of this study uncover that the prosecutor formulated more confirmation-seeking questions than information-seeking.These findings are in contrast with Hutauruk et al. (2022) which uncovers more information-seeking questions formulated in court.However, he further investigated the judge's questions, while this study explored the prosecutor's questions, which uncovered their intention to attack the defendant's character as untrustworthy.Surprisingly, the prosecutor did not portray the defendant as guilty through his lines of questioning.On the contrary, in a study conducted by Liebes-Plesner (1984) as discussed in Gibbons (2003), the victims of rape cases were depicted to generate the rape.Nevertheless, attacking the defendant's character proves effective in this case.
A further finding on the pragmatic strategies used by the prosecutor during cross-examination of the defendant, particularly repetition and reformulation, shows that the prosecutor repeated and reformulated his questions a number of times only to contradict the defendant's testimony to the court with the ones she made in the police investigation report, which, again, showed inconsistency.At another opportunity, the prosecutor also used pragmatic strategies to test the consistency of the defendant's statement with her prior statement in the earlier line of questioning, which was unsuccessful.
These findings implicate that even though this case is weak due to the lack of key evidence (Budiari, 2016), the fact that power imbalance in courtroom communication (Atkinson & Drew, 1979;Cotteril, 2003;Heffer, 2005;Hutauruk et al., 2022;Maley & Fahey, 1991) exists, the prosecutor successfully attacked the defendant's reputation as an unreliable individual.Through his lines of questioning, the prosecutor has the power to influence the defendant's testimony to shift to his desired version (Gibbons, 2003).

CONCLUSION
This study examined courtroom conversation during the defendant's crossexamination in an Indonesian murder case, to focus on the inquiries made during the defendant's cross-examination.The two primary objectives of this study are to ascertain the force of the questions and the pragmatic techniques, particularly repetition and reformulation, employed by the examining party to stress particular messages.
Applying conversation analysis, the force of the questions was discovered.The intention of the lines of questions formulated by cross-examiners was delivered through various question types, each with a different function, namely information seeking and confirmation seeking.A pattern of questioning was discovered, where information-seeking questions were formulated first, followed by confirmationseeking questions to which the defendant's response contradicted her previous statements.The examining party's main point in the lines of questions was to imply that the defendant's testimony was unreliable in comparison to either a witness' testimony or the CCTV footage evidence.To further examine the cross-examiner's intention, pragmatic strategies particularly repetition and reformulation were further explored.Utilizing these tactics, the cross-examiner established a further negative reputation of the defendant as an unreliable individual since she provided two different versions of an event in court and the police investigation report.
In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrate that various question types developed by the examining party serve various purposes.Even though a line of questioning has a variety of question types for a variety of purposes, there is only one message that is implied, which is to show the judge the untrustworthiness of the defendant's testimonies.
There are a few limitations in this study.The first drawback is that, even though Indonesian national TV carried live coverage of this particular case's trial, there is not much display on the YouTube channel regarding the examination-inchief's part of examining the defendant.As a result, it restricts the scope of this study from evaluating two perspectives: those of the parties conducting the crossexamination and the examining-in-chief party.Hence, it is recommended for future studies to investigate both perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the communication dynamic in legal settings.
Another drawback is the challenge of locating references to courtroom questioning in Bahasa Indonesia as research on Indonesian courtroom communication is still limited.While most of the previous research has examined non-Indonesian courtrooms, the results of this study add more insight into Bahasa Indonesia courtroom interaction.The findings suggest that maintaining an effective questioning strategy could help strengthen a weak case against the defendant.Without key evidence, the prosecutor could paint a negative image of the defendant through the lines of questioning during cross-examination.

Table 2 .
Function of questions.

Table 3 .
The force of questions.