A Study Of Silence Acts In Chinese Courtroom Discourse

The thriving forensic linguistics has been focusing more on research topics closer to practices gradually and combines with phonology,relevance theory,presupposition,cooperation principle,(im)politeness principle,conversational analysis in pragmatics,translation theories and systemic functional grammar,expanding new perspectives of research in forensic linguistics and serving the legal sphere with more linguistic theories.This thesis mainly discusses about silence phenomena in Chinese courtroom discourse from the perspective of goal principle and conversational analysis.In a country where reticence dominates the expressing styles,the connotation of silence has far surpassed saying nothing.The positive or negative attitudes vary from context to context.From the perspective of linguistics,scholars put forward after detailed analysis that half a second silence may be unbearable in normal conversations.Though opinions differ,they decided to calculate the duration of pauses with millisecond,dividing the pause into four types-pause,space and gap,silence inside a turn and silence between turns,meaningful silence.Silence phenomena can denote significant conversational connotation,affecting the transition of turn-takings.This thesis mainly studies pauses or silence phenomena over 1 second in courtroom discourse,aiming at analyzing features of silence like the forms of silence,goals of silence,cooperation relations,influence on cooperation relations and interactional modes,time duration and times of silence,context-construction of each role,and so on.The body part separates silence into four forms-entire silent answers,silence in the beginning,middle of the discourse,and silence at the end of the discourse.Silence in different locations may differ in connotations and attitudes.The thesis discusses about connotations and individual goals of each role--the judge,the lawer,the plaintiff and the defendant.They expect to achieve obligatory goals endowed with their identities respectively.The goal relations can vary with the process of conversations and concrete goal realization--connvergent,divergent and neutral goals.Goal relations of silence can impact cooperative relations and interactional structure.The author also analyzes hierarchical goals.The most frequent patterns of interactional structures are Q-R,Q-R-F or Q-0 R.This thesis collects eight trials and transcribed one trial from the public courtroom trials on Chinese Public Trial Network,acquiring times of pauses and total duration of silence in the trial.After close comparison,it is discovered that the judge has conducted the most frequent and longest duration of silence acts,the defendant ranking the second,followed by the plaintiff and the last,lawyers of each side.Everyone’s silence denotes different connotations based on goal principle,which should be finally confirmed by certain context.This thesis also analyzes the methods of different participants-the judge,the lawyers,the plaintiff,the defendant to construct contexts,endowing silence with different backgrounds and corresponding connotations.Proficient in legal knowledge and abiding by certain working ethics,the judge constructs contexts that can convey their authority,fairness,prudence and power,whereas lawyers aim at winning the trial through debates with professional knowledge,employing courtroom debating tactics to constantly present convincing proof and plea,avoiding disadvantageous elements,enhancing persuasiveness and authority of their language.The plaintiff usually considers to be infringed,therefore elaborating their unjust facts with psychological superiority.Silence acts occur less frequently in their speeches with a sense of inferiority only to the judge.If the defendant does behave perniciously,silence acts would appear frequently in the speech,denoting abashment or timidity or the state of loss.If not,the silence acts convey confidence and attitude of cooperation in investigation and verification of the truth.