'Tell us in your words...'

Current literature on the language of barristers and their questioning strategies makes clear that questioning procedures manipulate witness testimonies. Also known is that the examination phase encompasses more wh- questions that invite more contentful answers than cross examination; while cross-examination is more challenging in nature. However, this is a somewhat simplistic analysis of the factors at work in barrister questioning strategies. This paper reports on a study of barrister questioning strategies in conjunction with witness answer forms, in order to gain some measure of the extent to which witnesses are allowed to ‘tell their own stories in their own words’. Additional factors taken into account include presumed sympathies of respective witnesses - i.e., do questioning strategies differ according to assumed sympathy for the defense or prosecution. The resulting statistics reveal that witnesses provide very little of the crime narrative conveyed to the jury; and barrister questioning strategies is a function of the assumed sympathies of respective witnesses. The data are the court transcriptions of a Supreme Court murder trial, held over 6 days in Victoria (Australia) during 1986. The data encompass 33 witness testimonies