An Investigation Into The Use Of Presupposition In Criminal Courtroom Inquiry

Since the 1970s forensic linguistics has become a robust and independent area of scholarship. Both linguists and legal professionals have shown increasing interest in the ways that language and law intersect. Many linguistic theories can be applied to the study of courtroom language, so does presupposition theory in pragmatics. Evidence shows that judges, prosecutors and counsels in criminal courtroom inquiry employ presuppositions at a high frequency to get information and to test the credibility of defendants and witnesses. But a few studies have been found to explore the use of presupposition in the court.Presupposition, with its root in philosophical studies, is an important concept in linguistics. Generally speaking, presuppositions are what are taken by the speaker to be the common ground of the participants in the conversation. They are closely tied to the meanings of lexical items or constructions, and are very sensitive to contextual factors. The use of presupposition in criminal courtroom inquiry has its typical contexts, features and effects. On the basis of presupposition theory, a theoretical framework is established in this study to examine the use of presupposition in criminal courtroom inquiry. It primarily explores how judges, prosecutors and counsels achieve their respective purposes by using presuppositions, and what the functions and typical features of presuppositions are in criminal courtroom inquiry.Relying on authentic data transcribed from three criminal cases, this study is methodologically characterized by qualitative and descriptive analysis with some quantitative justifications. The study shows that presuppositions are widely used in criminal courtroom inquiry by judges, prosecutors and counsels for different purposes. Whereas the judge improperly employs presuppositions indicating guilt for investigation in criminal courtroom inquiry, the prosecutor tends to use more presuppositions to prove the accusation and guilt stated in the indictments, and the counsel uses presuppositions to prove his client's innocence or to reduce the seriousness of guilt. Among them, prosecutors employ the most presuppositions. The main functions of presupposition—investigation, confirmation, elicitation, and trapping are explained in detail with examples from the data. In addition, most presupposition triggers are found available in criminal courtroom inquiry employed by judicial professionals.It is hoped that this study can enrich the research on presupposition, help to understand presupposition, and facilitate the judicial professionals to obtain useful information in criminal courtroom inquiry. It is also hoped that it may shed some implications on the use of legal language in the court.