Question Types in Courtroom Discourse in Nigerian Court of First Instance

Courtroom questioning, different from everyday conversation, is highly strategic and strictly regulated process where every inquiry serves a specific institutional goal. Questions are used in establishing factual evidence in direct examination, controlling the narrative and witness in cross-examination, and testing credibility. It is also applied in persuasion and coercion, and in ensuring procedural fairness. Questions and answers, therefore, constitute an important characteristic of courtroom discourse. Facts are established from such interactions and judgments passed at the end of sessions. Since questions could be intriguing and deceptive and could lead to unintentional responses that could implicate or further complicate matters, lay litigants must take each question with caution. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the types of questions in the Nigerian court of First Instance and to find out the extent to which the lay litigants understood the questions, which outcome would lead to judgments. There is paucity of recorded studies in this aspect, and this research seeks to fill that gap. Ten court sessions were observed and five randomly selected, lay litigants were interviewed on the outcome of the proceedings. The questions and responses were noted. The Critical Discourse Analysis was adopted as the theoretical frame for the analysis of data. Findings revealed that direct and indirect questions are used in the court. Such direct questions as wh-questions, yes-no questions and declarative questions were used for different purposes and in some cases, they were misunderstood by lay litigants who gave confusing responses that rather created more problems for them, hence, some unfavourable judgments.