The Pragmatic Research Of Court Discourse

As an important judicial activity,court trial has huge impacts on all parties within the trial activity.As a central form of the court practice,courtroom discourse has always been a significant research subject among linguists and law scholars,and has important theoretical significance and application value on the research of courtroom interactions.Especially in recent years,with the progressing of judicial reform,attentions have been raised by all social sectors towards courtroom discourse,thus the research of the subject has more and more diversified and practical.On that basis,this research will take account of particular courtroom context factors,conduct quantitative and qualitative analysis of a serious of 18 court trials(9civil and 9 criminal cases),in order to construct a new linguistic strategy system dedicated for courtroom discourse appliance.Specifically,the dissertation aims to solve the following problems:1.Reveal the microscopic structure and microscopic details of courtroom discourse,analyze the discourse characteristic of the Chinese court trial interactions,enrich the pragmatics research on courtroom discourse.2.Conduct a power framework analysis towards Chinese court trials,discuss manifestation patterns of how different discourse roles of the court trial obtain and maintain power.3.Construct a pragmatics principle for courtroom discourse in order to improve the efficiency of the court trial,with a basic strategy being co-operation and politeness,and a definite purpose being the final goal.4.Offer guidance to verbal communication behaviors by applying first-hand courtroom discourse materials.This dissertation consists of nine chapters.In chapter one,as the introduction part of the dissertation,the author briefly states the purpose,significance and content of the research,and presents the methods,content and theoretical basis of the dissertation in order to lay a foundation for follow-up research.In chapter two,centered on courtroom discourse,which is the research subject of the dissertation,present a theoretical overview on forensic linguistics and courtroom discourse,review major research findings of active forensic linguistics scholars of recent years,and offer an outlook of the future trend of forensic linguistics,especially the courtroom discourse.In chapter three,the author combines the research outcome of the linguistic behaviors,firstly analyze the microscopic discourse structure in relation to court trials,secondly comprehend court interactions in both integrity and detail in regards to the turn-taking and interactive features of the court interactions,and then integrate and summarize the basic characteristics of the courtroom discourse,and analyze the functions and effects of different linguistic behaviors.In chapter four,based on the role theory of sociology,the author divides the discourse roles of the court into aggressive discourse roles and vulnerable discourse roles,among which,the aggressive discourse roles include judges,public prosecutors and lawyers,whose discourse is backed by legal background knowledge,and are both strategic and logical;however,as vulnerable discourse roles,the parties often apply verbosity strategy,fuzzy strategy and correction strategy.In chapter five,the relationship between courtroom discourse and its power is discussed.It takes power as an entry point,analyzes the relationship between various linguistic elements and discourse roles in courtroom discourse,discusses the interactive relationship between manifestation forms and power in courtroom discourse through linguistic phenomenon in court trials,and takes judge discourse as an entry point in order to analyze the discourse behaviors of male and female judges in court trials,believing that the construction of court power over-rides natural factors such as gender,with an emphasis on the structural impact of power over social genders.In chapter six,combines the classical cooperative principle of the pragmatics principles,analyzes the compliance and violation behaviors of discourse roles in court interactions,and attempts to construct a new cooperative principle of court discourse in relation to the basic characteristics of the Chinese court context.In chapter seven,from an angle of politeness principle,discuss how politeness principle is reflected in the court trial process.The dissertation argues that both the cooperative principle and the politeness principle are necessary discourse strategy and diplomatic means.With the progressing of the court trial,the circumstance of compliance or violation will occur at any time,the appliance of politeness principle demonstrates hierarchy and asymmetry,which has a direct connection with the hierarchy,discourse goal of every participants.In chapter eight,court discourse and purpose,the author combines Meizhen Liao's statement on purpose principle,discusses the purpose of courtroom discourse,states the layers of purposes and relationships in courtroom discourse,as well as the relationship between the purpose and the appliance of linguistics.The dissertation argues that in the process of the court trial,in order to achieve different goals,different parties in court need to apply verbal strategies and legal logic based on the circumstances of the cases as well as the stages of the court trial,so that the discourse purpose of all communicative parties can be achieved.In chapter nine,the conclusion.It summarizes the analysis as a result of the subject research,and make a statement in terms of the innovations the dissertation made that set it apart from the other theoretical researches within the field,as well as some lacking of the dissertation and future assumptions made on the research subject.Through the research above,the dissertation aims to build a relatively sophisticated courtroom discourse pragmatics system,states the interactive patterns of all parties in court practices from both macro and micro angle,and summarizes the effective pragmatics strategy for all parties,in order to facilitate progression of the court trial activities.