On The Interpersonal Meaning Of The Interaction In The Courtroom

Interpersonal meaning is a term drawn from Halliday's Systematic Functional Grammar. As one of the three metafunctions, the interpersonal metafunction of language mainly serves to establish and maintain social relations such as the expression of social roles. The interpersonal function, however, can be realized through choosing from the network of the lexicogrammatical system, which is through the mood and modality system. And as its nature infers, the interpersonal meaning might be the best demonstrated in the courtroom interaction.Mainly based on the theories of Halliday's Systematic Functional Grammar and those of discourse analysis and pragmatics, this thesis uses the data from O.J. Simpson's case and the 90 minutes' court debate from the Bush v. Gore case to investigate the how the interpersonal meanings are generally realized in the courtroom interaction. Through a systematic analysis of the linguistic elements in the courtroom interaction it is found that the elements such as questions, tense, modals and personal pronouns are usually used to realize the interpersonal meaning. The using these elements not only helps the lawyer to exert power over the witness and potentially the jury and the judge, but also helps to establish and maintain different interpersonal relationship in the courtroom.It is hoped that the study may serves to show how the interpersonal meanings are generally realized in the courtroom discourse. Besides, it is also hoped that it may help to raise the awareness of the significance of the interpersonal meaning study in a specific discourse-the courtroom language and to make some contribution to the interpersonal aspect of language study.