Abstract
This paper takes on the perspective of linguistic anthropology and analyses the data of exchanges in a Spanish interpreter-mediated courtroom under the Japanese lay judge system using a Spanish interpreter, from the following points: 1) Coherence, which is a key element for the trustworthiness of a testimony, is neither objective nor absolute, but is culturally constructed through meta-pragmatic processes involved in discursive practice; 2) Interpreters, who are perceived as non-participants according to the courtroom discursive norm (or courtroom pragmatic ideology), and actually involved in constructing the poetic discursive text; 3) Courtroom discursive practice, which is woven out of the interplay between "what is said" (denotational text) and is more likely to surface in interactants' minds, and what is meta-pragmatically regimented through cultural stereotypes (Putnam, 1975) such as "common sense," pragmatics, and "cultural ideology," which tend to be implicit and are often indexed as a premise. Although one of the objectives of introducing the lay judge system is to have the wholesome "common sense" of citizens properly reflected in the trial process, this study shows that in this new system, discursive cultural gaps for the foreign accused are often deepened and left untranslated. The paper suggests the necessity of revisiting the court interpreter's role from the perspective of multi-layered discursive practice.
