The Construction And Use Of Narratives During Courtroom Examinations

The present study is conducted on narratives occurring during courtroom examinations. It attempts to emphasize the importance of using narratives strategically through describing the construction of narratives and analyzing lawyers' challenges of them. After reviewing the previous studies, the author adopts the narrative theory proposed by Labov and his collaborator (1967, 1997) as the theoretical framework. With the framework, the author delineates the construction of narratives and analyzes how prosecutors or lawyers try to win cases through challenging narratives constructed by other parties during courtroom examinations.After analyzing the data, the present study argues that usually three forms of narratives are constructed during courtroom examinations. They are elicited narratives, prosecutor or lawyer-proposed narratives and collaborative narratives. In addition, the author states that narratives occurring during courtroom examinations are not necessarily invulnerable. In fact, lawyers usually try their best to challenge narratives constructed by others during courtroom examinations, especially during cross-examinations. The present study focuses on the prosecutor's challenges to the defendant's three narratives in one trial happening in a Chinese court. The finding is that prosecutors/lawyers usually may use four essential strategies. They are focusing on details, disrupting the narrative order, filling in the missing information and constructing new narratives or narrative sections.The thesis concludes that narratives are widely spread in courtroom examinations. The parties involved make great effort to construct complete and effective narratives, which are expected to help them win their cases. Meanwhile for prosecutors and lawyers, it is similarly important whether they can find leaks in the narratives, which are constructed by the opposite parties, and effectively challenge them.