The Pragmatic Functions Of Discourse Markers In The Courtroom

In recent years, the transdisplinary study has been more and more popular in thefield of linguistics. However, the study on courtroom discourse draws scholars’ attention,which is out of the following reasons. Theoretically speaking, it promotes thedevelopment of the applied linguistics to study the courtroom discourse. On the otherhand, discourse markers, the common language phenomenon in the courtroom, provideus with a valuable point to reveal people’s language production and interpretationmechanism. Practically speaking, it brings some implications to the members in thecourtroom to study the courtroom discourse. For example, in order to maintain thecourtroom interaction successful, the speakers in the court can guide the hearers to inferand interpret the utterances correctly by using some language strategies, such as thediscourse markers. In addition, the study of courtroom discourse furnishes the languageresearchers with abundant data and broadens the sight of linguistics.To ensure the innovation and authenticity of the linguistic data, the authortranscribes the voice-record of three trials into the text according to the data transcriptrequirements. Moreover, the author also picks up the discourse markers from thespeeches and testimonies by Judge Hsiang Che-Chun in the Tokyo Trials. With thetheoretical framework of the Relevance Theory, focusing on the ostensive-inferentialcommunication in the court, this thesis explores the pragmatic functions of the discoursemarkers in the court. The author selects the discourse markers from the court trials withthe purpose of figuring out the following questions:(1) Is Relevance Theory feasible toexplain the speaker’s motivation of using discourse markers in the courtroominteraction?(2) What are the pragmatic functions of discourse markers in the courtroomon the basis of the linguistic data collected by the author?(3) What is the relationshipamong the pragmatic functions of discourse markers in this research? Combining withthe linguistic data, the author gets the following findings by the methods of literaturereview, induction and descriptive analysis:(1) In the courtroom interaction, the speakercould use discourse markers as the language strategy to alter the hearer’s cognitiveenvironment so that the hearer can interpret the utterance correctly. In other words, theRelevance Theory provides the theoretical support for the motivations of usingdiscourse markers in the courtroom.(2) According to the previous scholars’ studies, theauthor proposes that discourse markers can function on the level of the interpersonalemotions, the level of text and the level of context.(3) The author finds that thepragmatic functions of the discourse markers in the court overlap with each other, whichindicates the diversity and complexity of the discourse markers.The innovations of this thesis exist on three points. First, the linguistic data, whichis collected and transcribed from the authentic trials by the author, guarantees thereliability and validity of this research. Second, combing the previous descriptions todiscourse markers with the courtroom data collected in this research, the author redefines discourse markers in this thesis. Third, on the basis of the literature review, theauthor makes an induction to the previous views on the pragmatic functions of discoursemarkers and establishes a tridimensional modal to show their functions on theinterpersonal emotion level, the textual level and the contextual level, which also provesthe diversity and complexity of the pragmatic functions of the discourse markers.