Discourse Structures And Informative Functions Of Wh-question In Chinese Courtroom Discourse

As the key part of the criminal trial,the questioning-and-answering also belongs to thepart provided with the strongest dynamic significance and research value.In Chinese criminal trials,the questioning-and-answering acts as an integral whole,but it follows “the questioning first” principle generally,thus making the questioning occupy the leading status,control the trial topic and determine the trial process.In short,the discourse structure is more important than the content in terms of Wh-question in courtroom discourse.In addition,Chinese is a kind of tone language,every part of the intonation will affect the process of information transmission in communicating with others.Therefore,in order to achieve the purpose of questioning,the speaker should employ not only appropriate discourse structures,but also satisfying intonation patterns.That is,the informative function of the intonation is particularly important to studies about the audial feature of Chinese courtroom discourse.Therefore,based on the corpus of 296 Wh-question extracted from 19 criminal cases,this thesis,with the focus on the quantitative analysis and supported by the qualitative description,classifies speakers' discourse structures within the framework of the theme-rheme theory and the focus theory.And influenced by the intonation,it intends to reveal main informative functions of each structure by means of the speech analyzing software Praat.According to the result,the present study summarizes three main discourse structures of Wh-question in Chinese courtroom discourse:(1)theme + rheme,with the focus on the latter;(2)null theme,rheme occurs in the sentence-initial position with the focus;(3)theme + rheme,with the focus in the first section.The information of theme is not fixed to the known information in discourse structures mentioned above.It represents the known information in the first two structures while in the third one,it represents the unknown information.Furthermore,with the intonation,the study finds that the intonation nucleus of the first structure is relatively fixed.And the discourse structure is frequently and widely used while its informative function is only to reconfirm the known information in the trial process.Compared with the first one,the second structure presents various intonation patterns.With the strong energy in language,it has other informative functions than inquiry in the context of institutional discourse,such as,confirmation and verification,emphasis and in-depth inquiry.And it is also one of the effective means to highlight the dominant position of the legal staff.Different from the former structures,the third one is used at a lower frequency,in whichtheme represents the new information.And it is exactly the outward manifestation of the speaker's subjective attitude.As a kind of institutional discourse,courtroom discourse is purpose-oriented.That is,the difference in purpose will inevitably lead to the difference in choosing the discourse structure.And influenced by the intonation,different discourse structures will present different informative functions,which will help the speaker to get more favorable information in turn and achieve the proposed purpose of the questioning.In addition,it is hoped that studying Wh-question from the perspective of the audial characteristic of courtroom discourse will provide the beneficial reference for judicial practice to some extent.