An Analysis Of The Turn-taking Strategies In The Courtroom Conversation

This thesis is targeted to analyze the turn-taking strategies of the participants in the courtroom conversation based on the turn-taking model proposed by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson and the Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in the analysis of the courtroom conversation. This thesis is aimed at discovering the turn-taking strategies employed by participants in the courtroom interaction and improving the turn-taking strategies in the courtroom conversation with the Cooperative Principle in order to help the judge construct the legal truth exactly and help the parties fight for more litigious speaking rights.The author has collected twenty trial conversations of the authentic trial disks in different People’s Courts from four districts of Beijing during 2012 to 2015. In this study, four cases out of the twenty are selected to be analyzed in detail. There are two criminal cases and two civil cases:drunk driving case, a mob to disturb traffic order case, a divorce case and a succession dispute case. Firstly, the extracts from these four cases are analyzed. Then, the analysis reveals the distribution of the turn-taking strategies used by the participants. After that, the turn-taking strategies employed in every case are contrastively analyzed. Finally, the violation of the Cooperative Principle maxims is analyzed in this thesis. It can be learnt from the analysis that the turn-taking strategies are commonly employed in the courtroom conversation, especially the turn-yielding strategy and the turn-holding strategy. The judges and the plaintiffs in criminal cases use the turn-yielding strategies most frequently. The defendants in criminal cases adopt the turn-holding strategies most while those in civil cases use the turn-holding strategies relatively more. Based on the analysis of the turn-taking strategies employed by the participants in the courtroom conversation, the author proceeds to explore the ways to improve the court conversation in the light of the Cooperative Principle, such as explicitly reminding and asking questions repeatedly in the turn-yielding strategies and overlap in the turn-claiming strategies.This study is expected to make contribution to the application of the turn-taking strategies in the courtroom conversation and to the improvement of the trial efficiency.