Questioning Structures And Narrative Construction In Chinese Criminal Courtroom Discourse

This thesis attempts to study the narrative structure embedded in Chinese criminal courtroom examinations and by so doing find out how the prosecutors, lawyers and judges achieve their narrative goals through questioning, what strategies they used and what macro/micro structure their questioning adopt. It's hoped that some implications for the Chinese legal system can be drawn from this analysis.Research on courtroom narrative and courtroom discourse structure is rare in China, not to mention the combination of the two. Researchers abroad have made interesting progresses in the two aspects but few have linked the two together.With the guidance of Labovian narrative structure theory and Sinclair & Coulthard's rank scale theory, this thesis tries to reveal the narrative construction and strategies used during the construction through the analysis of 4 Chinese criminal courtroom examinations. The study is both descriptive and interpretive.In the first part, a brief introduction of the research background, significance, aim, method, data and methodology is given. Part 2 is a review of previous studies on narratives and questioning, in ordinary discourses, institutional discourses and legal discourses. Part 3 constructs a theoretical framework based on William Labov's narrative theory (1967) and the rank scale theory developed by Coulthard (1981), especially the exchange structure notion. Part 4, the main part of the essay, examines the cases we collected using the theoretical framework we presented in the previous part. Attention is also given to the strategies used in the process. In this part, the questions we brought forward in 1.2 are examined and answered. Part 5 concludes the present study with the major findings in this research, points out the implications and limitations of the studies, and offers our suggestions on further research.Through the analysis of narrative construction embedded in courtroom examinations, it can be concluded that narrative structure and conversation rank scale analysis is practical in courtroom discourse analysis. They can help reveal problems that currently exist in the Chinese court and the direction to follow in trial reform.