The Realization Of Lawyers’ Language Power In Cross-Examination:A Pragmatic Approach

Courtroom discourse, a typical institutional discourse, embodies the relationship between the court participants. The study on courtroom discourse applies extensively theories of rhetorics, sociolinguistics, conversational analysis and pragmatics. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad mainly conduct their research on the courtroom discourse from the perspectives of discourse analysis, intercultural communication, and functional grammar. However, the limitations in their research are as follows:1) focus on the static analysis of the discourse and the corpus, while ignoring the flexibility of trial language;2) rigidly adhere to the cultural background or syntax of the language, and make the courtroom discourse studies confined to the study of words, phrases and language style;3) few researches have been done on language power of courtroom discourse, especially on lawyers’ language power from the pragmatic perspective.In order to reveal the realization of lawyers’ language power in cross-examination, this thesis will, based on the theory of conversational analysis, presupposition and cooperative principle to answer the following two questions:1) how is conversation analysis theory applied to legal language research?2) how do lawyers apply the cooperative principle and presupposition theory to achieving their language power?In this thesis, the author first reviews the related research at home and abroad, and proposes some limitations in their research. Then the author presents the theoretical framework of this thesis, namely, conversational analysis, cooperative principle and presupposition theory, and makes a discussion on the application of conversation analysis in forensic study. To discuss the pragmatic means of realizing lawyers’ language power, this thesis starts with lawyers’ verbal strategies in cross-examination. Through analysis, the thesis finds that language widely applies presupposition and deliberately violates cooperative principle to achieve language power. Finally, the author briefly draws a conclusion and points out the limitations, as well as the suggestion on formulating the study of language power research and legal practice.