A Multi-modal Discourse Analysis Of Verbal And Visual Meanings In Administrative Court Trials

Multi-modal discourse analysis provides an effective method and theory for dynamic discourse analysis,and each stage of administrative court trials contains rich modal resources,so multi-modal discourse analysis of administrative court trials has certain appropriateness.However,there is little research on multi-modal discourse analysis of administrative court trial at present,so this paper makes an exploratory attempt on this area.Based on Halliday’s three meta-functions of language,Kress’ s Visual Grammar and Zhang Delu’s multi-modal discourse analysis framework,this thesis selects 10 administrative trials from the China Court Trial Open Network to analyze the construction of interpersonal meaning of administrative court trial discourse from both verbal and visual modes.This study focuses on the following three questions:(1)How does verbal mode construct interpersonal meaning?(2)How does visual mode construct interpersonal meaning ?(3)What is the relationship between verbal mode and visual mode?The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)In terms of verbal mode,declarative sentences and interrogative sentences are mainly used in the construction of interpersonal meaning,which reflects question&answer mode is main mode in court trials.Moreover,the plaintiff and defendant tend to use declarative clauses to state facts or express opinions while interrogative sentences are mainly used by judges to obtain information from them,this reflects that the judge controls the right to speak in the trial,while the plaintiff and the defendant are the controlled party.In addition,modal verbs,interpersonal grammatical metaphors and personal pronouns are studied within mood system.It is found that in administrative court trials,the medium and low value modal verbs are used frequently,especially used by the plaintiff and the defendant;but high value modal verbs are rarely used.The judge’s use of high value modal verbs is only employed in procedural discourse.Within interpersonal grammatical metaphor,clauses introduced by“认为(think)”and“觉得(think)”are of high frequency.The subjects of such clauses used by the plaintiff and the defendant are usually the first person,while the judges use the third person,indicating their neutrality.In the analysis of personal pronouns,this study focuses on the user’s self-address,in which the judge adopts more types of self-address,the plaintiff and the defendant,because of the subjectivity,incline to use the first person to address themselves.(2)With regard to visual mode,the use of eye-contact is the highest,which provided by the plaintiff and the defendant generally indicates offer,while the eye-contact of the judge mostly indicates demand.The use of gesture comes second,which is mainly functional one used to explain and accompany the language.Among them,the plaintiffs use the most frequently,which shows that plaintiffs are more proactive to defend for themselves.In contrast,the frequency of posture and head movement is relatively low.The posture is mainly non-functional,which is primarily given by the plaintiff and the defendant.In court,it mainly reflects the cooperative relationship between the parties and their own defense lawyer.In the process of administrative court trial,responsive head-movement accounts for a large proportion,which is mainly used by the plaintiff and the defendant to respond to the judge,reflecting the supremacy of the judge.(3)In terms of modal relations,verbal mode and visual mode are complementary in general.When visual mode and verbal mode exist simultaneously,the relationship between them is non-reinforcement.This study is a preliminary attempt on the application of multi-modal discourse analysis to administrative court trails,which provides a new perspective for court discourse research.This research has discovered some verbal and visual characteristics in constructing interpersonal meaning in administrative trials,which reflects the authority of judges and judicial and procedural justice.It is conducive to deepening the understanding of the characteristics and rules of China’s court administrative cases and promoting the spread of legal knowledge.