Solicitation Of Desired Information Through Topic Control In Courtroom Questioning--A Discourse Analysis Perspective

This thesis elaborates on the phenomenon of topic control in courtroom interactions, especially the interactions between judges, lawyers or prosecutors and defendants or witnesses. By analyzing the courtroom interactions, we aim to demonstrate how topics are controlled by questioners, and, more importantly, how desired information is solicited through topic control.Following the model proposed by Kuppevelt, we identify four phases in topic both in the Chinese and English data. These phases are: topic initiation, topic maintenance, topic shift and topic termination, each of which comprises subcategories. Topic control means control of the initiation, maintenance, shift and termination of topic.The research shows that topic control is a very common phenomenon in courtroom questioning. In courtroom interaction, it is questioners who control topics, and by doing so, they solicit their desired information. When controlling topics, questioners adopt various kinds of strategies like "repeated questioning", "foreshadowing", "sharp shift of topics", etc. to solicit information. It is also discovered that questioners of Chinese courts share lots of similarities in topic control with those of American courts despite the different legal systems.The present study may contribute to the topic study and may help to understand the nature of courtroom interaction. It is hoped that the investigation into the topic control in courtroom interaction may help questioners in their questioning and shed light on the intricacies of solicitation of information by linguistic means at large.