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UID:295@harvard-yenching.org
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221121T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221121T123000
DTSTAMP:20221103T182711Z
URL:https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/trials-heard-by-a-foreign-ear/
SUMMARY:Trials Heard by a Foreign Ear: A Study of Chinese Jurors’ Compreh
 ension of English Trials in Hong Kong
DESCRIPTION:Co-sponsored with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and E
 ast Asian Legal Studies\n\nIn-person talk – Seating is limited. Masks ar
 e required for all audience members.\n\nStudies in jury comprehension have
  hitherto mainly explored Anglo-American courts and focused on examining E
 nglish-speaking jurors’ ability to understand legal discourse\, particul
 arly with respect to jury instructions. Such studies reveal doubts about j
 urors’ comprehension of the legalese in jury instructions and argue for 
 the use of plain English to make jury instructions accessible to lay juror
 s. This paper reports findings of a study contextualized in the Hong Kong 
 courtroom\, where criminal trials in the High Court are routinely heard by
  local Chinese jurors presumed to have a sufficient command of the languag
 e used in court\, be it English or Chinese. This study aims to test the va
 lidity of  the presumption about Chinese jurors’ ability to understand 
 trials conducted in English\, which they speak as a second or even a forei
 gn language (L2)\, and to explore how L2 jurors’ comprehension might be 
 further compromised due to a lack of proficiency in English. A random samp
 le of local Chinese eligible for jury service (N=53) are recruited from th
 e community to take part in the study\, which comprises a demographic surv
 ey of the subjects\, as well as a test of their comprehension of courtroom
  discourse using authentic audio recordings of two trials from the High Co
 urt of Hong Kong. The results of this study show an average listening comp
 rehension level of around 41% by the subjects\, with some attaining below 
 25%. The results also show that the subjects’ listening comprehension pr
 oblems are not limited to legalese. Taking the Voice Projection Framework 
 (Heffer 2018) as a point of reference\, this study suggests that while dis
 cursive voicing is largely to blame for the subjects’ comprehension prob
 lem\, as in studies with native English-speaking jurors\, in the case of L
 2 jurors\, the speakers’ physical voicing of courtroom discourse is demo
 nstrated and perceived by the subjects to be a major factor in impeding th
 eir comprehension of the courtroom discourse. This paper argues that makin
 g courtroom discourse accessible to L2 jurors means more than improving th
 e discursive voicing\, but physical voicing matters as much\, if not more.
  This paper also discusses the possibility of providing interpretation for
  jurors in need of the service to ensure equal participation in jury servi
 ce by people randomly selected from the community and to mitigate the jury
  dilemma.
CATEGORIES:Visiting Scholar Talks
LOCATION:Common Room (#136)\, 2 Divinity Avenue\, Cambridge\, MA\, United S
 tates
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