World Englishes, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 106–116, 2011. 0883-2919 Witness examination as interdiscursive practice VIJAY K. BHATIA ∗ ABSTRACT: International commercial arbitration offers an interesting site for the study of witness examination as an interdiscursive phenomenon across professional, jurisdictional, linguistic and cultural boundaries. It is contentious not only because it is shared across two rather distinct practices, namely, litigation and arbitration, bringing together international participants, particularly stakeholders who carry their individual baggage in the form of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, sometimes languages, as well as interdisciplinary expertise, but also because it is meant to integrate two distinct legal systems and cultures, namely, common law culture and the civil code culture. Drawing on a multiperspective analysis of interdiscursive aspects of witness examination practices from arbitration and litigation, an attempt will be made to identify and discuss some of the issues emerging from the hybrid nature of this legal practice, which may be seen as problematic in maintaining the integrity of arbitration practice as an alternative to litigation in international commercial contexts, though the paper is based on observations from trials conducted in English. The paper also reflects the Anglo-American domination of the legal discourse in arbitration discourse much like the Anglo-American or Inner Circle ideologies of standard language in world Englishes. INTRODUCTION International commercial arbitration is regarded as an economical and effective alterna- tive to litigation for settling commercial disputes. However, over the years, arbitration is being increasingly colonised by litigation practices, threatening, not only the integrity of arbitration practice as an effective alternative to litigation, but also compromising the very spirit of arbitration as a non-legal practice, which offers a unique opportunity for a ‘critical genre analytical investigation’ (Bhatia 2010), of interdiscursive tensions across arbitration-litigation practices. International commercial arbitration practice is thus an in- teresting site for the study of witness examination as an interdiscursive phenomenon across professional, jurisdictional, linguistic and cultural boundaries. It is contentious not only because it is shared across two rather distinct practices, namely, litigation and arbitration, bringing together international participants, particularly stakeholders who carry their in- dividual baggage in the form of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, languages, as well as interdisciplinary expertise, but also because it is meant to integrate two distinct legal systems and cultures, namely, the common law and the civil law cultures. Drawing on a multiperspective analysis of interdiscursive aspects of witness examina- tion practices from arbitration and litigation, the paper will highlight an important aspect of interdiscursivity in arbitration-litigation practice, thus making a claim that such inter- discursive colonisation of arbitration practice is problematic in maintaining the integrity of arbitration practice as an alternative to litigation in international commercial contexts. Interdiscursivity, in this context, is viewed as ‘appropriation of semiotic resources, partic- ularly those which are text-external, across different genres, professional practices, and/or ∗ Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. E-mail: enbhatia@ cityu.edu.hk C  2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd