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Cohesive Devices And Their Relevance Constraints On Interpretation Of Witness Testimony At Police Questioning

Posted on:2007-01-19Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:R M TaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:2166360185450693Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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This paper attempts to study the language art of witnesses at police interviewing in criminal cases in China. In the present study our focus is on cohesive devices. From the perspective of Relevance Theory, we analyze cohesive devices employed by witnesses, who try to increase the credibility of their testimony by sounding consistent, logical and relevant by means of these.Relevance Theory, which is established by Sperber & Wilson, is a cognitive-pragmatic approach. It is mainly based on the definition of relevance and two principles of relevance, namely cognitive principle of relevance and communicative principle of relevance. Assuming that every ostensive utterance is a presumption of the best balance of processing effort against contextual effects, communicators in producing an utterance must take the audience's cognitive context into account to produce the most relevant ones. To exert intended effects on investigators, witnesses would use ostensive stimuli ~ different cohesive devices to make their statements sound reliable, consequently changing investigators' minds in the end. By adopting the theory, we construct a conceptual framework to unravel the particular discourse feature ~ cohesion in the language of witnesses.Based on this framework and transcripts of police interviewing randomly collected from the court, we address ourselves to two research questions (1) How do witnesses employ different cohesive devices to connect pieces of information and particular properties of these devices? (2) How do they employ these cohesive devices to accomplish their communicative goals? By exemplifying the ostensive process of witnesses triggered by the devices and analyzing inferential process conducted by investigators when necessary, we investigate the selection and functions of cohesive devices in witness testimony.We tentatively draw the conclusion that Relevance Theory provides us with a satisfactory explanation of selection of cohesive devices in witness testimony. This thesis may deepen our understanding of the linguistic choice of cohesive devices in witness testimony and in addition, may help investigators at the stage of investigation to examine the witness more strategically and appropriately.
Keywords/Search Tags:witness testimony, cohesive devices, Relevance Theory
PDF Full Text Request
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