Research On Discourse Power For Judges In Criminal Trials

Law, language and power are closely related. The power of law is realized by means oflanguage. Power finds expression in discourse. In courtroom trials, especially criminal trials,the imbalance of power between judges and the defendant in China is quite obvious. From theperspectives of either social position or language strategies, the defendant is the weak groupin court trials.According to Fairclough, social power determines the formation of discourse. ButFoucault does not agree. He believes that power is not abstractly owned but is embodied insocial communications. As Schegloff indicates, although people believe that the social statuesof speakers play an important role in social intercourse, we must prove it by empirical studies.Thus, this paper will be a critical analysis of courtroom discourse in China, aiming atanalyzing the formal features of courtroom discourse and approaches to the realization ofdiscourse power of judges. The study is based on authentic courtroom discourse data.Discourse analysis approach is one of the most important and systematic approaches to“bridge” the gap between linguistics, social psychology and sociology. Thus, the theoreticalframework of the study is the basic ideas of discursive power in Critical Discourse Analysis.After a brief introduction of the basic structures of criminal trials in China, the roles ofjudges and features of courtroom discourse, the author illustrates judges’power control incourtrooms over defendants with authentic courtroom discourse data from the levels ofdiscourse strategy and social intercourse, making use of conceptions like turn-taking,interruption, presupposition, metacommentary, and institutional context and so on. Thefollowing part discusses how judges should fully and correctly perform their discourse powerby means such as fully performing their institutional power, improving techniques in askingquestions, avoiding inequitable preconception toward the defendants and promoting plainlanguage. On the defendants’ side, several strategies can be adopted to resist discourse powercontrol, such as adequately performing their discourse power they are entitled to, fully comprehending questions, avoiding reformulation and presupposition of other participantsand using fuzzy language appropriately.Despite of the various participants in the courtroom, this paper chooses to limit thediscussion only to the discourse between judges and defendants, focusing on judges’courtroom discourse analysis of criminal trials in China. The author strives to make clear howjudges use their power through the courtroom discourse in Chinese criminal trials, and hencepropose several possible improvements of linguistic strategy of both the judges and thedefendants to address those problems of inequality.