A Study Of Argumentative Patterns In Lawyers' Arguments Within The Civil Cases' Courtroom Contexts

Combining with theories of hierarchies and complementarities,this paper explores the argumentative patterns in the lawyers' arguments occurring in the civil cases' courtroom trial.Starting from the hierarchy of discourse semantics,this paper analyzes how APPRAISAL system is used to realize lawyers' argumentative purpose,then the paper goes up to the hierarchy of genre,and explores how lawyers design their sequences of arguments to realize the argumentative purpose.Starting from the theories of complementarities,this paper investigates how individuation makes differences in the lawyers' argumentative purpose.Descriptive method is used to see how lawyers use attitudinal resources in their arguments,how they arrange their interpreting sequences of arguments,and what individual distributions are when answering justices' questions to realize the argumentative purposes.The main findings are: during the lawyers' argumentative process,affectual resources are rarely met in their arguments,however,judgmental and appreciative resources are commonly seen in their arguments,with judgmental resources gaining more advantages.Through the uses of judgmental and appreciative resources,more credibility and competitive advantages are gained.Besides,the basic structure of their arguments is Orientation ^ Focus ^(Record of cases)^ Interpretation ^(Application for Disaffirmation)^ Re-Orientation ^ Quotation of relevant laws ^ Discussion of similar cases ^ Re-Interpretation ^ Coda.The intentional design of the structure could have more influences on justices' final judges and gain more argumentative advantages.What's more,based on lawyers' reactions towards justices' questions,four basic patterns are presented as(+confidence,+directivity),(+confidence,-directivity),(-confidence,+directivity),(-confidence,-directivity).And these intentional answering patterns contribute to the argumentative effects as well.