The Coherence And Relevance Of Narratives In Courtroom Examination

This essay empirically studies the courtroom narratives from the linguistic angle. The body of this essay includes two parts: coherence and relevance of courtroom narratives.Coherence functions in the monologues of lawyers and witnesses while relevance functions in their dialogues. Both of them are important characteristics of courtroom narratives. In trial process, the judge and/ or jury, the counsel, the plaintiff, the defendant and the witnesses co-construct narratives mostly in fragmented form with a question-answer pattern. To make their own stories credible and reasonable, the counsel uses various strategies. In direct examination, the counsel questions his own witnesses with many tag questions to provide much space and leeway for the witness to uninterruptedly construct narratives. In cross-examination, the counsel questions the witness with many Yes-No questions to restrict and control the topic. On the one hand, witnesses should keep his words internally consistent, that is coherent;on the other hand, witnesses should be responsive to the counsel's questions by providing relevant responses to the questions asked. The certain context—courtroom—restricts the participants' power of voicing, which could avoid the overuse of their rights and increase the possibility of being impartial to decide the case result. Within the framework of Labov's narrative theory, this thesis analyzes the cohesive devices of the courtroom discourse;and on the basis of ostensive-referential mode of relevance theory, this thesis analyses the contribution of three kinds of relevance (semantic, topical and contextual relevance) to discourse coherence.At last, this thesis concludes that relevance and coherence of the testimony would contribute to their construction of stories and strengthen their persuasion.