Epistemicity in Mubarak's and Al-Adly's Testimonies in the "Storming Prisons and Eastern Borders" case: The Knowing, Unknowing and Believing Positions

The present study examines the testimonies of former President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak and former Minister of the Interior, Habib Al-Adly, in the case of storming Egyptian prisons and Eastern borders during the 2011 events in Egypt. By employing the Griffiths Question Map developed by Griffiths and Milne (2006) and Zuczkowski et al.'s (2014) Knowing, Unknowing and Believing model, the study examines the types of questions asked to Mubarak and Al-Adly in the case in question. It also investigates how both witnesses construct epistemicity in their testimonies as well as the relation between the types of questions asked and the epistemic positions adopted by Mubarak and Al-Adly in their testimonies. Results reveal that both witnesses received a number of productive questions (e.g. open questions and probing questions) and unproductive questions (e.g. multiple questions and forced choice questions). It has been found that epistemicity is constructed in Mubarak's and Al-Adly's testimonies by employing a number of lexical and morphosyntactic markers to take up the Knowing, Unknowing and Believing positions. The analysis also shows that Mubarak and Al-Adly adopt the Knowing position more frequently than the Unknowing and the Believing positions when answering productive and unproductive questions. The frequency of occurrence of the Knowing position is higher when answering productive questions in the testimonies of both Mubarak and Al-Adly.