An Analysis Of American Attorneys' Defense Statements -from The Pragmatic Perspective

Legal English is of special pragmatic characteristics. The thesis attempts to examine the attorneys' closing statements during American trials. With the help of pragmatic theories and forensic linguistics, the author analyses the linguistic details of 22 pieces of closing statements chosen from American TV series Boston Legal.The discourse of courtroom is strictly hierarchical, with the judges and juries at the top and having the power of deciding both sides'destiny. The lawyers, witnesses and prosecutors are regarded as the powerless group who can also be called the degraded. But according to Brown& Levinson (1978), being goal-directed and task-driven, the courtroom discourse is supposed to be a place where people communicate directly and forcefully. As a result, the attorney needs to do his best to influence the audience but in the mean time show his respect to the judge and jury. The trick for dealing with this dilemma is to use the Politeness strategies.According to American jury system, jurors play an important role in determining the facts of a case, but at the same time they are common people from all circles and may not be experts specialized in law. As a result, when making decisions, the jurors might also judge a case from their life experiences and the basic social norms on right or wrong rather than wholly counting on the laws and regulations (余素青, 2006). This would leads to two crucial factors in American lawyers'closing statements. For one thing, the attorney can't use too much boring legal terminologies. For another thing, some persuasive strategies could play a more significant role in turning the tables in a seemingly doomed case.Being the final blow for the trial, closing statement means a lot in the process of trials. In order to make full use of the time which is closest to the decision making, the counsel would use some linguistic strategies to convince the jurors and judges that his client deserves a fair result.Descriptive study and quality analysis method are employed in studying the cases chosen from Boston legal. The study is discussed in these three aspects: (1) to collect final statements of American lawyers and classify them; (2) to analyze the language used by the attorneys and to explore their immanent forming mechanisms; (3) to find out different politeness strategies applied by attorneys with a purpose of persuading the judge and the jury.Through the analysis of the closing arguments, we can get a general view about the function of politeness strategies in closing statements at court. It's also hoped that through digging into the politeness strategies, attorneys could craft more heart winning closing arguments.