A Study Of The Defendants’ Identity Construction In Criminal Courtroom Discourse

General Secretary Xi Jinping stresses that “we must follow a path of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics,develop a Chinese system of socialist rule of law,and establish China as a socialist country under the rule of law.” Research on courtroom discourse contributes to constructing a socialist country under the rule of law and has received increasing attention from scholars.The courtroom is a place full of interaction.The participating parties in the courtroom construct different identities through interaction to achieve their communicative goals.In the criminal trial,constructing the defendants’ identities is particularly important,which will determine the defendants’ guilt or innocence and the degree of guilt.This study establishes a goal-driven pragmatic identity construction analysis framework by transcribing the corpus of three criminal trials.Based on this framework,the defendants’ identity construction is systematically analyzed.This study focuses on the following questions:1.What kind of identities of the defendants are constructed in the interaction between the participating parties involved in the trial?2.What discourse strategies have the participating parties adopted in the process of constructing these identities?3.Why do the participating parties in the trial construct such kinds of identities?With the analysis of the transcription,the defendants’ identity construction shows a certain complexity.The identities constructed by different parties are very different.These identities form a joint force that ultimately determines the guilt or innocence of the defendant.The main findings of the thesis are as follows:1.The construction of the defendants’ identities is dynamic and developmental.The participating parties construct different pragmatic identities at different stages of the trial.The judges mainly construct the defendants’ identities as information confirmer,agreer or disagreer,self-defender and so on.The prosecutors mainly construct negative identities as a guilty person,crime perpetrator,intentional lawbreaker,an incompetent person,deceiver,and embezzler through interaction with the defendant.At the same time,prosecutors also construct neutral and positive identities of the defendants such as fact confirmer and confessor.The defense lawyers construct the defendants’ positive identities as cooperator,an innocent person,damage remediator,penitent and contributor.If the defendant’s guilt is an established fact,the defense lawyers will attempt to construct a light negative identity.The defendants also construct their identities,including an innocent person,penitent,victim,and responsibility evader.The parties in the trial construct the defendants’ identities step by step through interaction,and finally converge into a general identity.2.The participating parties adopt various discourse strategies to construct the defendants’ identities.The main discourse strategies include presupposition,interruption,questioning,and hedges.The discourse strategies adopted by prosecutors and defense lawyers are flexible and diverse,while the discourse strategies adopted by defendants are relatively few,reflecting the imbalance of power distribution in courtroom discourse.3.The defendants’ identity construction is mainly restricted by the institutional roles of participating parties and their discourse goals.The identity construction is goal-driven.The institutional role of judges determines the goal-neutral relationship between judges and defendants.Therefore,the judges mainly construct neutral identities of the defendants.The relationship between prosecutors and defendants is goal-conflicting,so prosecutors construct negative identities in general.During the interaction,prosecutors also construct neutral and positive identities of the defendants,which are still restricted by their communicative goals and serve to achieve this goal.The relationship between defense lawyers and defendants is goal-convergent.The defense lawyers aim to prove the defendants’ innocence or misdemeanor,and therefore they mainly construct positive identities of the defendants.The defendants also construct their identities through interaction with other parties,reflecting that although they are at the bottom of power,they still have discourse power to some extent.The construction of the defendants’ identities is restricted and driven by the goals of the parties.As the interacting parties construct the defendants’ identities,they are also deconstructing the identities constructed by their opposite sides.The identities constructed by the participating parties form a joint force to construct a final identity of the defendant,which plays a decisive role for judges to adjudicate cases.This study is conducive to promoting the construction of a socialist legal society,enriching the relevant research on courtroom discourse,and providing a realistic reference for legal practitioners on how to construct the defendants’ identities more effectively,which can improve the efficiency of courtroom trials.