Question-response Interaction: Courtroom Discourse Dynamics

Forensic linguistics is a burgeoning branch of linguistic studies in China as well as in the other parts of the world,although much effort has been made in the field of both forensic and legislative language in the Anglo-American world. It seems that quite some work has been done in philological approach of legal documents,texts,well-prepared defense speeches,etc.,in China,but little attention was paid to treatment of what is going on in the courtroom as situated discourse,which is characterized by question-response interaction,upon which the whole forensic procedure is said to be based. The present paper is exclusively devoted to the study and analysis of question-response interaction at both micro and macro levels in trials in the Chinese courtroom,where in recent years much reform has been carried out and the adversarial system featuring the Anglo-American law has been introduced and incorporated in the traditional trial procedure. Transcription of tape-recordings of 17 courtroom trials amounting to more than 900,000 words was used as data,of which questions and responses were identified and then studied and analyzed within a framework which draws insights from speech act theory,discourse analysis,conversational analysis and corpus linguistics,with focus on qualitative description supported by quantitative analysis. An attempt was also made to explain what had been revealed as a defining feature of courtroom discourse-conflict within a model of theory called "the principle of universality of goals in human action." The present study was conducted with an eye to revealing (1) the status quo of Chinese courtroom trials from linguistic perspective,(2) the mechanism of question-response interaction in terms of structural patterns as manifested as discourse develops,(3) strategies by different participants as manifested in question-response interaction,(4) the applicability of the classical principle of cooperation as formulated by H. P. Grice in courtroom interaction,and (5) reasoning in as well as through question-response interaction. It is hoped that the results of the present study will be revealing to both people whose business is study of language and people on the bench as well as of the Bar.