A Study On The Pragmatic Strategies Used By Public Prosecutors In Courtroom Questioning

The purpose of public prosecutors’courtroom questioning is to gain case facts to investigate law breakers for legal liability. In order to gain information effectively, public prosecutors need to restort to pragmatic strategies. This thesis is intended to study the pragmatic strategies used by public prosecutors in courtroom questioning from the perspective of pragmatic theories, aiming to, through an analysis of linguistic skills in public prosecutors’courtroom questioning, not only make a contribution to the deepening and complementing of researches about pragmatic strategy and pragmatic theories, but also offer valuable guidances to improve the public prosecutors’s competence in courtroom questioning.This thesis chooses the legal programme The Trial Scene of CCTV 12 as the source of corpora, which generalizes pragmatic strategies used by public prosecutors in courtroom questioning and analyzes how those strategies are realized with Cooperative Principle, Presuppostion Theory, Speech Act Theory and Purpose-Intention Principle. This thesis transcribes trial processes of the legal programme The Trial Scene, and then picks out public prosecutors’ questioning fragments which are classified into two kinds of samples based on defendants and witnesses for detailed analysis.The research questions are as follows:(ⅰ) What pragmatic strategies are frequently used by public prosecutors in courtroom questioning?(ⅱ) How are the pragmatic strategies realized under the guidance of Cooperative Principle, Presupposition Theory, Speech Act Theory and Purpose-Intention Principle?(ⅲ) What differences are there in pragmatic strategies used by public prosecutors when the questioned object is different?After analysis, it is found that:Firstly, at the level of discourse, public prosecutors use repetition strategy, interruption strategy, step by step strategy, candid strategy, diversionary strategy and doubt strategy in courtroom questioning. At the level of sentence, they use vagueness strategy and presupposition strategy. Secondly, when repliers are violating the quantity maxim, quality maxim and relevance maxim of Cooperative Principle, public prosecutors respectively realize repetition strategy, interruption strategy and doubt strategy. And when public prosecutors themselves are violating the manner maxim, vagueness strategy is realized. By applying presuppostion and using implicative words, presupposition strategy is realized. By performing direct speech act, candid strategy is realized. By performing indirect speech act, divisionary strategy is realized. By applying Purpose-Intention Principle, step by step strategy is realized. Thirdly, when public prosecutors are questioning defendants, divisionary strategy is the most employed and candid strategy is the least employed. However, when public prosecutors are questioning witnesses, candid strategy is the most employed and divisionary strategy is the least employed. As for the strategies employed in between, there also exist differences in the occurrence frequency of repetition strategy, interruption strategy, step by step strategy, doubt strategy, vagueness strategy and presupposition strategy when public prosecutors are respectively questioning defendants and witnesses.On the basis of concluding major findings, this thesis reveals pragmatic strategies employed by public prosecutors in courtroom questioning, provides some implications for studying courtroom questioning from the perspective of pragmatic theories and helps to improve public prosecutors’compentence to gain information in judical practice.