Affiliation Through Value Negotiation In Chinese Criminal Courtroom Argumentation

Drawing on affiliation hierarchy(i.e.the construction of communal identity through shared values)from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL),this research explores how public prosecutors and defense lawyers negotiate attitudinal values and use different kinds of values to affiliate with judges in the discourse of courtroom argumentation.A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis is adopted in this research.The data,consisting of 20 copies of courtroom statements(ten copies from the prosecution and ten copies from the defense,with a total length of 68116 words),are drawn from ten representative criminal court trials in China.Following the social constructionism of identity,the research builds its qualitative analysis on the latest findings on affiliation from SFL(especially on Appraisal-Ideation couplings).UAM Corpus Tool is deployed for quantitative analysis of evaluative instances and Semantic Profiler is used for creating semantic waves.By linking linguistic analysis with value negotiation in court,it sheds new light on the relationship between discourse and courtroom argumentation.First,to unravel the value negotiation in court,the research deploys the notion of paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes from SFL,and gives an overall typology of the discursive resources of value negotiation.It presents a detailed account of how potential bonds are formed,positioned and confronted in courtroom argumentation.Moreover,to reveal the nature of values of the lawyers for both sides,the interrelatedness of these discursive resources is identified in their discourse.Second,the research identifies the discursive strategies both the prosecution and the defense use to negotiate values when giving reasons in court.It explores the shared values of legal communities(i.e.the rule of law)in China and shows how bonds are complexed from the cline of instantiation.From the dimension of Conjunction,during the field shift signaled by the causal relation,both the prosecution and the defense tend to use various Appraisal-Ideation couplings in the everyday field,while these linguistic resources greatly decrease in the legal field.From the dimension of Periodicity,both the prosecution and the defense join legal discursive community by unpacking legal crime and adding attitudinal values to crime elements in the different levels of Periodicity.Third,the research also investigates how public prosecutors and defense lawyers negotiate different kinds of values with judges.It starts off with exploration of the macro-genre of court statements.Through the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis,we find that the degrees of iconization(i.e.foregrounding interpersonal meanings)and the centrality of its ideational targets will significantly influence affiliation with judges in court.The research provides a social semiotic model of affiliation in Chinese courtroom argumentation from the level of discourse semantics,and identifies the affiliation strategies that help legal professionals in courtroom argumentation.The major contributions are summarized as follows:(1)By showing how public prosecutors and defense lawyers compete to align with judges,the research presents the latest semiotic view of affiliation concerning value negotiation.It complements the abstract argumentative theories which emphasize the role of values in convincing the audience.(2)By exploring the values of language users in courtroom argumentation,it provides both synoptic and dynamic investigation of identity in the legal context.It demonstrates the social construction view of identity construction in courtroom argumentation.(3)It adds new dimensions to the previous affiliation studies by exploring legal discourse and identifying practical affiliation strategies.It shows how affiliation can be achieved through instances of evaluative language in the discourse of courtroom argumentation.This dissertation consists of seven chapters.Chapter One briefly presents the theoretical background,research objective,research methodology and the significance of the research.Chapter Two reviews value research in courtroom argumentation from the rhetorical perspective,the dialogical perspective and the logical perspective.It also reviews the construction of communal identity in discourse from the perspective of SFL,pragmatics,Membership Categorization Analysis,Conversation Analysis,Critical Discourse Analysis and linguistic ethnography.It shows the implications of the previous research and identifies the research gap.Chapter Three illustrates theoretical hierarchies and complementarities in SFL,discourse semantic systems pertinent to this research,as well as the relevant dimensions of Legitimation Code Theory.They are employed to provide the explanatory framework for the meaning potential of the discourse of courtroom argumentation and its underlying organizing principles.Chapter Four illustrates how bonds are formed,positioned and confronted from the cline of instantiation in courtroom argumentation.Chapter Five explores how bonds are complexed from the cline of instantiation in courtroom argumentation.Based on case studies,Chapter Six further discusses how both the prosecution and the defense compete to affiliate with judges through bonding negotiation.Chapter Seven summarizes the major findings,implications and limitations.The author hopes that this dissertation provides insightful implications for value negotiation and affiliation strategies in the context of courtroom argumentation.