An Appraisal Approach To Respondents' Speech Reaction Towards Questioners' Questions In Courtroom

The law and the language of the law affect the daily lives of everyone in our society. As a new branch of learning, forensic linguistics attracts people's attention. Courtroom language, with its unique institutional features, brings forward some questions for study or discussion.This paper draws insights of semantics of evaluation to develop the analysis and it focuses on the responses of the respondents who have to be subordinate to the questioners in courtroom. It explores the speech reaction of the respondents in courtroom. The theoretical foundation is the Appraisal systems. The qualitative method is taken for the study. By analyzing the data, the writer has found that the respondents'speech reaction in courtroom reflects their attitudes towards special questions of questioners, and their attitudes depend on how they attribute their responsibilities for their conduct.We could not thoroughly explore the stance, intention, preference, etc. of the respondent if merely drawing support from general structural and functional linguistic approach traditionally and we could not have a clear and thorough insight into speech connotation and speech reaction of the respondents in the court, either. The Appraisal systems, founded by Professor James Martin, is a particular approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way that language is used to convey stances, to construct personas and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationship, i.e. Appraisal theory can be used for analyzing how the writer or the speaker organizes his words, what his or her words convey or conceal, and how the writer's or speaker's persona and stance towards one matter or thing is. The Appraisal theory is just an ideal theoretical framework for this research.