A Pragmatic Study Of Courtroom Questioning-Answer Interaction Under The Cooperation-Relevance-Adaptation Model

Courtroom trial is mainly made up of a question-answer form which plays a very important role in the trial process. Simply, question-answer interaction serves for the clarification of case facts, the determination of the credibility and acceptability of evidence,and contributes to the embodiment and performance of authority, the endowment and practice of rights and the resolution of contradiction as well. Therefore, starting from the perspective of question-answer form is to grasp the most basic and essential part of courtroom discourse.Based on Sperber’s Relevance Theory, Adaptation Theory of Verschueren and the Cooperation-Relevance-Adaptation(C-R-A) Model proposed by Liao Qiaoyun, this thesis studies the special question-answer interaction in court trial from the two perspectives of discourse generation and discourse understanding.As one of the judicial language studies, this paper aims to find out the answers to three questions:(1) What is the relationship between the questioners and respondents? Does the questioning and answering action go on smoothly without obstacles? Whether do the respondents always cooperate with the questioners offering the desired answers?(2) How do the questioners adapt to the respondents verbally in order to achieve the best relevance and accomplish cooperation between the two sides?(3)How can we classify the answers of the respondents in the court?The data used in this paper are from the eleventh volume of a series called The Court Is now In Session, and all the information of this series, true and reliable, was recorded by the legal department of China National Radio on the spot authorized by the Supreme People’s court including civil, criminal, and administrative cases. This study gives a full description of the information mentioned above and makes some further analysis and induction using qualitative approach supplemented with quantitative one.The results show that:(1) courtroom trial is a strong objective-oriented activity. People participating in the litigation process have their own purposes, and different purposes lead to different questioning and answering strategies. Under the influence of the different purposes,the relationship between the questioners and answers can be classified into cooperation type,less-cooperation type, and non-cooperation type.(2) Direct examination, cross-examination,questioning the defendants on the part of prosecutors, and questioning performed by the judges constitute the main part of litigation process, and each link embodies different language styles and strategies. Namely, as for direct examination, questioners have better use open-end questions as much as possible, avoid using leading questions and carry out thequestions in a simple and logical way; when it comes to cross-examination, the questioners can ask the questions repeatedly, use close-end question form, and complement experiential canvass of the respondents; as far as questioning the defendants on the part of prosecutors is concerned, the strategies can be summarized as guilty presupposition on the basis of facts,while the questions carried out by the defendant counsels contain innocence presupposition;the judges should take a fair attitude and should use procedural questions as much as possible,supplemented by the substantive questions if necessary.(3) Because of the different purposes and distinguished cooperative relationships, the answering attitude and strategies used by the respondents are different. In short, under the cooperation relationship, the answers can be summarized as standard type, excessive type, elaboration type and speculation type; under the less-cooperation situation, the answers can be classified into shortage type, indirect type and roundabout type; under non-cooperation context, the answers can be divided into avoidance type, questioning type, confrontation type and quibbling type.