A Rhetorical Study Of Attitudes In Hyperbole In Chinese Criminal Defense Discourse

BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY interprets defense as what is used to denote the answer made by the defendant to the plaintiff’s action,by demurrer or plea at law or answer in equity.In order to protect the party’s legal rights and interests,there are three core purposes of the defense discourse: constructing facts,presenting demurrer,and persuading the judge to make a favorable judgment.Seeing from these definitions and descriptions,we can know that criminal defense discourse is the materials and opinions used in criminal cases to defend the defendant on the basis of facts and law.Therefore,defense lawyers who produce the discourse should present their opinions based on facts and avoid making inaccurate or even incorrect statements.However,it is found that hyperboles are used in the criminal defense discourse although they are treated as an overstatement or an understatement which carries inaccurate or incorrect information.The incompatibility between the criminal defense discourse and hyperbole greatly interests and motivates this study.Therefore,in order to unveil the role of hyperbole in the seemingly incompatible defense discourse,this thesis attempts to explore the working mechanism of hyperbole in Chinese criminal defense discourse from perspectives of Martin’s attitude system,Burke’s theory of identification and Aristotle’s persuasive appeals.The main research questions are as follows: 1)What attitudes are conveyed in hyperboles used by defense lawyers in Chinese criminal defense discourse?2)How does defense lawyers’ use of hyperbole exert influence on the conviction of judges? 3)Why are hyperbole used in Chinese criminal defense discourse.In order to answer these research questions,this thesis collected 200 hyperboles from Chinese criminal defense discourse,which is downloaded from authentic websites and official We Chat accounts.Integrating theories from SFL,classical rhetoric and new rhetoric,this thesis aims to study the function of hyperboles in Chinese criminal defense discourse.After the careful and in-depth analysis,the results show that: 1)There are abundant attitudinal meanings conveyed by hyperboles,among which appreciation is the most frequent,followed by judgement and affect.In the process of attitude identification,the strategy of identification by inaccuracy is preferred by defense lawyers to emphasize their identical attitudes with the audience.Among all the persuasive appeals,logos is most frequently used by defense lawyers to win a judgment in favor of their defendants.It proves that logical argument is still a significant part in the defense discourse.2)Defense lawyers mainly use three strategies to realize their purpose of persuasion.They try to persuade their audience,i.e.judges by arousing emotional response,creating or building specific personalities for the defendants,accusers or even themselves,and presenting logical argument.3)Furthermore,this thesis found that defense lawyers mainly use identification by sympathy to identify their affect and identification by inaccuracy to identify their appreciation with the judges to invoke their desired emotional response.In addition,identification by antithesis is most frequently used to identify judgement so as to build desired personalities to convince the audience.As regards the logical argument,it is found that defense lawyers identify their appreciation through identification by inaccuracy to lead the audience to the way how they think and infer.This study is expected to enrich the research in the field of forensic linguistics,and its research results may shed light on the employment of hyperbole in Chinese criminal defense discourse or other texts.