A Contrastive Study On Chinese And American Criminal Courtroom Questioning

Questioning, the principal means in courtroom trials, serves as an important weapon for all the trial participants including the judge, prosecutors, defense lawyers of both parties in the Anglo-American adversarial trial system. It is also essential for the Chinese court model which has gone through years of reform in order to adapt to the needs of local integration and reshaping different traditions. The whole court procedure is established on the basis of questioning, which is closely related to the interests of winning or losing, reputation gains and losses. Thus the study of courtroom questioning is of great practical significance and social value.Both the previous research of courtroom questioning at home and abroad put more emphasis on the individual courtroom surveys and studies in one particular country, lacking in Contrastive analysis of Chinese and western forensic language. In particular, the Contrastive study of courtroom questioning between Chinese and American trials is unprecedented in this particular field. This paper will focus on the Contrastive study on Chinese and American criminal courtroom questioning, with the intention to promote mutual understanding among the researchers in the related areas between the two countries, and strengthen the communication of legal procedure between China and the United States.This thesis will integrate both qualitative and quantitative approaches, It is organized on the basis of the transcription of two real criminal trials that took place respectively in China and America (China: February 26, 2004: a case involving murder of a man by four defendants conducted in Wuhan Intermediate People's Court; United States: September 26, 2006—October 29, 2006: a case of successive drug dealing, robberies, violent crimes, and murder of Defendant Sessoms and Jones against the Brooklyn court, New York, United States). The data is carefully compared and studied to work out the number of different types of questioning among all the trial participants at different stages of the trial. Then the similarities and differences of criminal courtroom questioning in China and America are sorted out and analyzed in details. Finally, the reasons that attribute to these differences are summarized and the thesis winds up with a general conclusion of the practical significance and value of this study.The paper consists of six parts. Part One introduces the general framework of the thesis. Part Two is the literature review of the previous research of questioning and also questioning in courtroom, and the relevant theories of Contrastive analysis are presented as well. Part Three is designed to the introduction of the methodology adopted in the thesis including data collection, data description and research procedure. Part Four analyzes the data with both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, and summarizes the similarities and the differences in courtroom questioning between China and America, with more focus on the latter. Part Five focuses on the findings of the thesis and analyzes the reasons that cause the similarities and differences. Part Six summarizes the findings and the limitations of the study, and suggestions for future research concerning the study are put forward as well.Based on the previous study with reference to courtroom questioning, this paper makes a Contrastive study of two similar data in China and the United States, and works out the similarities and differences as well as the possible causes. The paper is creative in the aspect that it serves as a breakthrough of the previous study in individual national courts, and makes an unprecedented Contrastive study into the similarities and differences of the Chinese and American courtroom questioning. The general mission of the study is to promote mutual understanding among the people in the legal fields, which is of great theoretical and practical significance.