The Conflict Between Questioning And Responding In Chinese Courtroom: A Linguistic Research

Forensic language is a kind of language phenomena, and forensic linguistics is a branch of linguistics. Research on forensic linguistics in china that was launched not long ago, has paid much more attention to the static syntax of legislative language than the dynamic language performance phenomena in courtroom communication. This thesis taking the conflict talk of question-response behavior in Chinese courtroom as a viewpoint, tries to induce the strategies that are adopted to solve the conflict by participants. The research not only can enrich the broad forensic linguistics that is useful to standardize forensic language, but also can perfect our common discourse analysis through comparison between the forensic question-response conflict and the daily question-response conflict. The corpora in this thesis are collected by transcription of record sound in Chinese courtroom. The marks of the transcription are from foreign research on discourse analysis. Plenty methods of native research on question-response are syntax researches about zero-context sentence. And common daily question-response is different with that in forensic context. Syntax research, discourse analysis, pragmatics analysis are all carried out in Foreign research on forensic question-response. Special speech meaning, speech strategies, and pragmatic features have been analyzed. Researches on question-response in Chinese forensic activity focus on talk between judge and plaintiff or defendant. This thesis uses question versus response as the technical terms of context sentence, and question versus response as the technical terms of speech act. Forensic act is mainly made up of question-response act. Question-response process is not smooth sailing but full of contradictory. When responder's response can not coincide with the response which is expected by questioner, conflict talk will happen. Forensic question-response conflict can be divided into two kinds: conflict caused by opposed purposes and conflict caused by non-opposed purposes. The different interest purposes of each side determine that each side has their own speech purposes. The macroscopic opposed purposes determine the question-response conflict in courtroom is inevitable. Forensic role contradict with other social status, and it is higher than any other social status in trial activity. So this contradictory may bring out a question-response conflict. The forensic professional has the same profession roles and the forensic roles. They can not constitute other social relationship with other participants. The litigants'profession role is not the same as forensic role. They act as forensic roles while they act as other social roles. Different forensic roles possess different forensic power and different forensic right, which decides the participants act as different discourse roles with distinct discourse right. So the participants in courtroom form a 3-grade system of discourse communication: judge﹥plaintiff and defendant﹥witness. The boundaries of their discourse right are clear. Question –response conflict is mainly due to those macro-factors. All the participants share the common purpose that is complete their own purposes of interest. And each participant in trial bears forensic obligation and duty. Those mean that whenever the question-response conflict happens, they should dispose of them. Therefore, forensic activity is a process composed of cooperation and conflict. Forensic question-response must be a process that cooperation is intersected by conflict. According to participants'different power and status, we divide the forensic question-response conflict into two parts: main conflict and minor conflict. The main conflict include:the conflict between the forensic professionals and the litigants and their witness,the conflict between the two opposed sides. The minor conflict includes: the conflict between the judge and the litigants'lawyers, the conflict between the lawyer and the witness on his side. Forensic procedure restricts the resolution of question-response conflict that leads to an important trait distinguish it from daily question-response conflict. The trait is forensic question-response conflict is ordered. The form of Forensic question-response conflict means the form of expression when it happens. From the viewpoint of the speech act process, itdisplays as interrupt and interrupted, overlap and overlapped, question closely and questioned closely. From the viewpoint of information transfer, it displays as the information provided by one side can not tally with the other side's request. It includes: provide zero-information, provide less information, and provide exceeding information. In courtroom question-response act, the questioner interrupt and overlap the responder among all the interrupt and overlap, 63.27%, the responder interrupt and overlap the questioner among all the interrupt and overlap, 36.73%. Furthermore, interrupt and overlap initiated by the questioner, 77.42% because of conflict. Interrupt and overlap initiated by the responder, 94.99% because of cooperation. In courtroom, keeping silence belongs to provide zero-information, which can be separated into keeping silence with subjective desire and keeping silence with objective factors. The final purpose of forensic activity is to judge the fact and adjudicate. So the participants should apply strategies to get rid of the conflict. These discourse are evolved with the development of speech act. From the viewpoint of the pattern and the content of question, the questioner's strategies include: repeat question, divide topic, summarize topic, use the presupposition to hide information, insert words or insert sentences to express desire, stress emphasize focus information. From the viewpoint of the patter and the content of response, the responder's strategies include: provide less information to avoid silence, add the source of information to cancel identity as source provider, repair the question, exploit "fuzzy"to supply vague information, utilize passive to offer information which transfer the meaning of non-subjective desire. Forensic question and response interact each other. Both the questioner and the responder always employ some strategies resolving the conflict to finish their discourse purposes. Consequently, question-response conflict is a process which is under control—out of control —under control again. Forensic question-response conflict occurs in a professional field, such special context results in its distinctive features from the question-response conflict in daily discourse. The differences are from discourse participants,...