Negative interrogatives and adversarial uptake: Building hostility in child custody examinations

The analytical focus is on parents' uptake to the attorneys' questions (in a collection of 289 negative interrogatives; from 156 examinations). All negative interrogatives, such as 'So the children won't see their grandma?', were cast in a polar format, projecting minimal yes-/no- responses. Yet, the parents' uptake featured expanded responses - defensive accounts and counter-blame - beyond minimal responses. Hostility was built up sequentially through the parents' uptake in the form of counter-blame and other re-allocations of blame. The blame-accounts were highlighted through extreme case formulations, rhetorical comments and other discursive devices. In this courtroom context, the parents were to answer, not to ask questions. Yet, they at times confronted the court, through metapragmatic questions, disrupting the interaction order of the courtroom. In numerous ways, negative interrogatives were related to adversarial features and escalation.