A Study Of Features And Causes Of Repair In Chinese Criminal Courtroom Discourse

This thesis is a conversation analysis of the characteristics and causes of repair phenomenon in Chinese criminal trial discourse, with the aims to reveal the different functions and features of repair among the judge, the prosecutor, the defendant and the lawyer, to analyze the relationship between trial stages and repair distribution, and to present a possible linguistic explanation on the causes of repair.By adapting Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (SJS)’ theoretical framework to meet the need of our analysis of repair in trial context, we identify in totality six types of repair in our data, including four types of successful repair (self-initiated self-repair, other-initiated self-repair, other-initiated other-repair and self-initiated other-repair), a repair failure and a repair suspension. Each kind of repair serves different roles among different trial participants:the judge uses repair strategies to explain terminology and the meaning of interrogation to the defendant, to ensure the accuracy of his or the defendant’s descriptions on criminal facts and to maintain the order of court proceedings; the prosecutor and the lawyer mainly use repair to ensure accurate descriptions in their or the defendant’s statement; the defendant often utilizes repair to justify himself or to ascertain the meaning of interrogation. Meanwhile, typical features of participants in repair process are identified:The judge and the prosecutor often interrupt the defendant to initiate the repair exactly when the trouble source is identified. The lawyer usually initiates repair favorable to the defendant. The defendant may sometimes interrupt the judge to make justification on his behavior and silence is the initiation technique only used by the defendant. What’s more, by using Grice’s Cooperative Principle, we find that, most of the repairs are initiated to observe and maintain the maxim of manner and the maxim of quality. But there are also cases in which maxims are violated to convey conversational implicatures in court.It is hoped that this investigation into the repair phenomenon in trial will contribute theoretically to the analysis of repair in other specialized interactive context and practically to the improvement of the efficiency in criminal trials.