<![CDATA[This study explores how witnesses in Indonesian criminal courts exercise agency and resist coercive questioning through linguistic and prosodic strategies. It aims to challenge the dominant view of witnesses as passive participants by uncovering the discursive mechanisms through which they negotiate institutional power and redefine authority in talk. The research adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis framework, integrating Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge and Goffman’s concept of face-work to examine courtroom discourse as a site of interactional struggle. Data were drawn from 18 hours of cross-examination in three district courts and analyzed using AntConc and ELAN to combine corpus-assisted and prosodic perspectives. This mixed qualitative–quantitative approach enables systematic identification of resistance patterns across lexical, syntactic, and acoustic levels. The analysis reveals that witnesses resist coercive framing through assertive repair, strategic evasion, hedging, and tonal dissent. These strategies transform compliance into controlled agency, allowing witnesses to reshape meaning without overt confrontation. Resistance thus operates as a routine communicative practice that momentarily redistributes power within institutional discourse. The study contributes to Critical Discourse Analysis and forensic linguistics by integrating prosodic and corpus-based tools to investigate resistance as both linguistic and embodied. It advances understanding of agency as a relational, performative practice, and provides a framework for discourse-sensitive evaluation of witness testimony in judicial contexts.]]>
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