Trials heard by a foreign ear

Abstract

<p>Studies in jury comprehension have hitherto mainly focused on English-speaking (ES) jurors’ ability to understand legal discourse, especially jury instructions. This paper reports some major findings of an experimental study which set out to examine the comprehension of jurors as second language (L2) speakers of English and to explore how jurors’ lack of proficiency in the trial language may impede their understanding of the courtroom discourse. Using data from Hong Kong courts, this paper examines Chinese jurors’ ability to understand trials conducted in English. Local Chinese eligible for jury service were recruited from the community to take part in a study designed to test their comprehension of courtroom discourse. The research data in the study are authentic court materials with special permission granted by the High Court of Hong Kong for their use. While most jury studies have pointed to the discursive voicing features of legal language as impeding factors of jurors’ comprehension of legal instructions, this study demonstrates that physical voicing features including the speaker’s accent, articulation, loudness, and speech rate, might have impacted even more on the L2 jurors’ comprehension of the courtroom discourse. This study highlights a pressing need to ensure jurors’ meaningful participation in order to guarantee the defendant’s right to a fair trial.</p>