Relevance Theoretical Approach To Pragmatic Markers In Lawyers' Statements

The present study carries out an examination on the use of the Pragmatic Markers (hereafter referred as PMs) in Chinese lawyers' statements on the basis of the categorization and function of them, with an aim of exploring the general structure and strategies adopted by the counsel in constructing lawyers' statements.Undertaken within the framework of relevance theory and metapragmatic awareness, this is a qualitative and descriptive study based on the data of 30 pieces of lawyers' statements. Relevance theory, the fundamental theoretical basis of the present study, accounts for the way PMs function by putting relevance constraints on the audience's interpretation of the statements;whereas metapragmatic. awareness, as a supplemental theoretical tool, explains the fundamental motivation for the use of PMs according to their functions, which, in general terms, can either indicate the relation of the successive segments of discourse or instruct the hearer attitudinally on how given utterances are to be processed. Therefore, the PMs in lawyers' statements accordingly fall into two major categories, that is, discourse markers and attitudinal markers, each of which can be further divided into several subcategories.The average occurrences and frequencies of each kind of PMs used in each part of the statement have been testified by comparing the usage of PMs among each lawyer's writings and between the statements for civil cases and criminal ones. The difference of the usage in the comparison turns out to be slight, which suggests that the average usage can represent the common phenomena. It has been found that a common structure has been adopted by all the counsel in the data examined, though the statements are composed by six different lawyers for different types of cases. In addition, certain strategies can be generalized fromthe common usage of specific PMs. Although the structure and strategies explored here are advisory, it is expected that the present study may shed light on the constructing of lawyers' statements for legal practitioners as well as law students in addition to the contribution to the study on Chinese PMs.