Discursive Resistance and Agency in Indonesian Courtrooms: Linguistic and Prosodic Strategies of Negotiating Power in Coercive Questioning

Arum Priadi

Abstract


This study investigates how witnesses in Indonesian criminal courts exercise agency and resist coercive questioning through linguistic and prosodic strategies. Challenging the perception of witnesses as passive participants, it examines how they negotiate institutional power and redefine authority in talk. Guided by the research question—how do witnesses use linguistic and prosodic cues to assert agency under coercive questioning? —the study employs Critical Discourse Analysis informed by Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge and Goffman’s theory of face-work. Data comprise 18 hours of cross-examination from three district courts, analyzed using AntConc and ELAN to integrate corpus-assisted and prosodic perspectives. Findings reveal four resistance strategies: assertive repair, strategic evasion, hedging, and tonal dissent, demonstrating that resistance is patterned and interactionally embedded. These strategies transform compliance into controlled agency, revealing how witnesses reclaim epistemic authority within institutional discourse. The study contributes to Critical Discourse Analysis and forensic linguistics by integrating prosodic and corpus-based tools to conceptualize resistance as both linguistic and embodied practice.

Keywords


Power, Resistance, Language, Witness, Agency

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ajšić, A. (2021). Capturing herder: A three-step approach to the identification of language ideologies using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Corpora, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.3366/COR.2021.0209

Bailey, M. (2002). Understanding Foucault. Contemporary Political Theory, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave/cpt/9300008

Bartholomaeus, C. (2016). Developmental discourses as a regime of truth in research with primary school students. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(7). https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1174896

Berk-Seligson, S. (2012). Diana Eades, Sociolinguistics and the legal process. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010. Pp. xv, 303. Pb. $35.04. Language in Society, 41(1). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404511000935

Brook, M., & Blamire, E. (2023). Language play is language variation: Quantitative evidence and what it implies about language change. Language, 99(3). https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2023.a907010

Canagarajah, S., & Dovchin, S. (2019). The everyday politics of translingualism as a resistant practice. International Journal of Multilingualism, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2019.1575833

Castro-Gómez, S., Kopsick, K., & Golding, D. (2023). Michel Foucault and the coloniality of power. Cultural Studies, 37(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.2004435

Chandler, D. (2007). Semiotics the Basics, Second Edition - 69249454-chandler-semiotics.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00176-5

Clift, R. (2014). Conversation analysis. Pragmatics of Discourse, 97–124. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214406-005

Cox, G. R. (2017). Erving Goffman. In Handbook of the Sociology of Death, Grief, and Bereavement: a Guide to Theory and Practice. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315453859-7

Del Rosario, V. A. B., & Ballesteros-Lintao, R. (2018). Investigative interviewing: Assessing questioning strategies employed to children in conflict with the law. In International Journal of Legal Discourse (Vol. 3, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijld-2018-2004

Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis and critical policy studies. Critical Policy Studies, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2013.798239

Fairclough, N., & Fairclough, I. (2018). A procedural approach to ethical critique in CDA. Critical Discourse Studies, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2018.1427121

Galasinski, D. (2000). The language of deception: A discourse analytical study. Sage Publications, Inc.

Hahirwa, G. J. (2021). The impact of subtle resistance to regional crop specialization: The case of maize farming in Rugeramigozi Marsh-Rwanda. Rwanda Journal of Social Sciences, Humanities and Business, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.4314/rjsshb.v2i1.5

Halldorsson, V. (2022). What Is Going On? An Analysis of the Interaction Order. Qualitative Sociology Review, 28(2). https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.01

Hancock, B. H., & Garner, R. (2015). Theorizing Goffman and Freud: Goffman’s interaction order as a social-structural underpinning for freud’s Psychoanalytic self. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 40(4). https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs21639

Haugaard, M. (2022). Foucault and Power: A Critique and Retheorization. Critical Review, 34(3–4). https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2133803

Hofmeyr, B. (2022). Knowledge work in the age of control: capitalising on human capital. Acta Academica, 54(1). https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa54i1/3

Kessler, A. D. (2005). Our inquisitorial tradition: Equity procedure, due process, and the search for an alternative to the adversarial. In Cornell Law Review (Vol. 90, Issue 5).

Kim, H. (2021). The implicit ideological function of the global health field and its role in maintaining relations of power. In BMJ Global Health (Vol. 6, Issue 4). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005620

Kuokkanen, A., & Seeck, H. (2013). Subtle resistance to normative management ideas in a masculine-gendered corporate culture. Management and Organizational History, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2013.801704

Lin, S. (2022). Social work indigenization in Mainland China: Towards a state-led decolonizing framework. Journal of Social Work, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1468017320981707

Lorenzini, D. (2015). What is a “Regime of Truth”? Le Foucaldien, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/lefou.2

Matoesian, G. (2005). Book Review: Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System. Discourse & Society, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/095792650501600109

Moreno-Ortiz, A., & García-Gámez, M. (2023). Strategies for the Analysis of Large Social Media Corpora: Sampling and Keyword Extraction Methods. Corpus Pragmatics, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-023-00143-0

Moulton, M. (2017). Not to nationalise, but to rationalise? Cooperatives, leadership and the state in the Irish dairy industry 1890-1932. Irish Economic and Social History, 44(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0332489317718977

Nagy, N., & Meyerhoff, M. (2015). Extending ELAN into variationist sociolinguistics. Linguistics Vanguard, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2015-0012

O’Keeffe, S. (2022). Identities at Work: The Staffroom, Playground, and School Environment. In Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93994-6_2

Oswald, S. (2010). Pragmatics of Uncooperative and Manipulative Communication. June. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.31590.55369

Pang, Y. (2017). Presuppositions in Strategies of Pragmatic Maneuver in Print Advertising Language. DEStech Transactions on Social Science, Education and Human Science, mess. https://doi.org/10.12783/dtssehs/mess2016/9759

Patton, P. (2010). Activism, Philosophy and Actuality in Deleuze and Foucault. Deleuze Studies, 4(Supplement). https://doi.org/10.3366/e1750224110001145

Pietro, A. Di. (2022). Irony, Names and Linguistic Resistance: NoVioletBulawayo’s/Ne Need New Names as a World-Making Narrative. Altre Modernita. https://doi.org/10.54103/2035-7680/18689

Priadi, A. (2025). Proximization as a Cognitive Mechanism in the Construction of Political Threat. Kajian Linguistik Dan Sastra (Kalistra), 4(3), 657–669. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.22437/kalistra.v4i3.50084

Priadi, A., & Prasetyo, M. (2025). Constructing Moral Legitimacy Through Empathic and Inferential Strategies in Political Discourse Toward a Cognitive Pragmatic Model of Diplomatic Persuasion. Fast in Humanities (FH), 1(2), 20–30. https://fast-humanities.com/fh/article/view/9/13

Raab, J. (2022). The theory-method-link in Erving Goffman’s sociology of the interaction order. Przegląd Socjologiczny, 71(4). https://doi.org/10.26485/ps/2022/71.4/4

Sasmita, R. P. R., Suseno, S., & Jaya, P. Y. (2023). The concept of reasons for eliminating corporate crime in criminal law in Indonesia. Heliyon, 9(11). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21602

Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006

Wang, J. (2019). Dániel Z. Kádár, Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction . Internet Pragmatics, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00034.wan




DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/jele.v10i6.1707

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2025 Arum Priadi

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.