A Cognitive Analysis Of Courtroom Discourses Based On The FCR Model

As a special type of institutional discourse,courtroom discourse has always drawn high attention from many scholars,who have made investigations from various perspectives,such as pragmatics,Functional Linguistics,Cognitive Linguistics,rhetoric,jurisprudence and so on.Although many significant achievements have been obtained,drawbacks have been inevitably revealed in those researches.Some studies are either lack of a solid corpus basis,or a systematic theoretical framework to analyze the data.Besides,comprehensive interpretations combining syntax,semantics,pragmatics are relatively insufficient.Therefore,based on the theory of Cognitive Linguistics and Dialogic Syntax,this paper constructs a model,termed as FCR(Frame-Cognitive Reference Point-Resonance),to explore the features of courtroom discourse from syntactic,semantic and pragmatic directions.Due to the difficulty in obtaining authentic materials,this paper will conduct the research on the basis of the data extracted from the American TV series How to Get away with Murder.Altogether 40 clips(6977 words in total)are collected for the analysis.After research,we find that the lawyer plays a dominant role in courtroom arguments.The lawyer set the frame with required information from the case,and looks for more details based on the reference point.Then he or she achieves agreements by making resonance with the witness,and eventually affect the final judgment.Most of the dialogues consist of questions and answers.The questions can be divided into two types: yes-no questions,in which the lawyer provides the principal contents,and the proportion is 73%;and wh-questions,where the key information is obtained by interrogation,account for 27%.Both of these two kinds of questions have frame resonances and focal resonances.Usually,every question and answer must be straightforward and concise.Once the witness achieved semantic agreements with the attorney,any explanation else is invalid.However,in order to convey some specialintentions,self-resonance discourse with similar semantic meaning yet different sentence patterns may be utilized.Owing to the leading role in the courtroom debate,attorneys can control the initiative of turn,the speed of discourse promotion and the determination of the final consequence.Seemingly uncorrelated facts may be mentioned in court sometimes so as to establish the ground for the lawyer's intention.