Discourse Semantic Analysis Of Statements Of Defense In Chinese Criminal Trial

In China, in order to avoid the punishment of criminals at the cost of the human rights protection, the advocacy system confers any suspect or accused the right to defend him/herself before being proved guilty. As the legal documents with the defense function, the statements of defense are presented with three fundamental purposes: the informative purpose to construct the truth, the argumentative purpose to refute the charges and the persuasive purpose to convince the judges and jury to make favorable decisions for the accused. Among the three, the ultimate goal of the statements of defense lies in persuasion. With the goal of persuasion in view, the statements of defense are presented as meaningful discourses with various kinds of discourse semantic resources rather than a mass of clauses. However, although the statements of defense in China have been studied from various approaches such as the rhetorical approach, the pragmatic approach and the Systemic Functional Linguistic approach, the researches up to now mainly focus on the specific linguistic means and pragmatic principles used to facilitate the rhetorical end of persuasion. Little attention has been paid to explore the discourse semantic resources used comprehensively from the discourse semantic perspective. Therefore, this thesis attempts to apply the discourse semantics proposed by Martin and Rose (2003) to probe into the discourse semantic resources used in the statements of defense in Chinese criminal trial. Then these discourse semantic choices are accounted for on the basis of the three situational variables of field, tenor and mode, and the communicative goal of genre.According to Martin and Rose (2003), the discourse semantic theory consists of five systems: Appraisal, Ideation, Conjunction, Identification and Periodicity. The Appraisal theory is concerned with evaluation– the kinds of attitudes negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned. The Ideation system focuses on the content of a discourse– what kinds of activities are undertaken, and how participants in these activities are described, classified and what they are composed of. Conjunction looks at inter-connections between processes: adding, comparing, sequencing and explaining them. Identification is concerned with tracking participants– with introducing people and things into a discourse and keeping track of them once there. Periodicity is concerned with information flow– with the way in which meanings are packaged to make it easier for us to take them in. These are the semantic resources to realize the ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning at the discoursal level. The application of these discourse semantic systems to analyze the statements of defense will make clear how the defenders express their attitudes with justification, how they construct the truth of the events and how they present the defense opinions logically.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to this thesis about its rationale, objective, data, methodology and the overall organization. Chapter 2 mainly reviews the study of the courtroom defense both at home and abroad as well as the research status quo of the statements of defense from various approaches such as the rhetorical approach, the pragmatic approach and the SFL approach. Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework of this thesis– the discourse semantics developed by Martin and Rose (2003) with its five systems. Register and genre are chosen to account for the discourse semantic choices. Chapter 4 applies the five semantic systems to analyze the discourse semantic resources used in the statements of defense and then accounts for why these resources are chosen with reference to the situational variables of field, tenor and mode, and the communicative goal of genre. Chapter 5 renders a conclusion of this thesis. First the main ideas of the thesis are summarized and then the implications as well as the shortcomings and suggestions for further research are pointed out.According to our research, the statements of defense are judgment-foregrounded and highly dialogic to make evaluation with justification. The defense is fact-based to construct the truth of the events. And they are coherent and logical with various kinds of conjunctions, definite reference and periodic information structure. All these discourse semantic resources work together to make the center of the statements of defense clear and well-supported and the structure logical and compact for easier understanding and reception. These discourse semantic choices are determined by the communicative purpose of persuasion in the statements of defense and greatly influenced by the situational variables of field, tenor and mode.We hope that the research will shed some light on the legal document preparation, especially the drafting of the statements of defense. The success of the statements of defense will benefit the human rights protection and the realization of judicial justice and social equality. We also hope that the research will arouse people's awareness of the significance of language in the legal field so that they could use their linguistic knowledge to facilitate their practice.