Acquiring Favorable Information Through Presupposition In Lawyer's Inquiry

This thesis aims to explore how lawyers acquire favorable information through presupposition. Based on the analysis of the functions and characteristics of different presuppositions, the author endeavors to demonstrate how different presuppositions are used in different situations.Following the model proposed by Yule, the author analyzes six presuppositions both in the Chinese and English data. They are existential presupposition, lexical presupposition, structural presupposition, factive presupposition, non-factive presupposition, and counter-factual presupposition. Based on this theory and the review of previous studies, the author builds an analytical framework to analyze presupposition used as a strategy of setting up traps and information organization strategy. The latter refers to conducting topics or information flow to the direction of lawyers' expectation. The research shows that presupposition is a very common phenomenon in lawyers' inquiry. In lawyer's inquiry, presuppositions sometimes are used as traps to cheat the witnesses give testimony, but they are employed to lead and control information flow to prove the assumption of lawyers most of the times.This research may contribute to presupposition in courtroom and may help to understand the nature of lawyer's inquiry. It is hoped that the present study may help lawyers to get favorable information more effectively and help witnesses to avoid presupposition trap, thus enhance the justice of courtroom interaction.