1.Introduction
1.1 Research background
With a long history, China is known for its remarkable civilization and good etiquette observed by Chinese people, which are also reflected in judicial activity. At the special social activity, people are also expected to follow the rules of politeness according to the law and social rules, which in particular govern the language and behavior of professional legal workers in courtroom for judicial justice, credibility, and an effective trial. Among them, public prosecutor who exercises the power of public prosecution on behalf of the procuratorial institution is required to observe and take advantage of judicial etiquette to help achieve justice, reveal the truth, reduce false and wrong charges, and raise judicial credibility.
Regulation makers and Chinese national law have paid more and more attention to civilized language and politeness in courtroom discourse. It is stated in the regulation or conduct of code that the court staff should treat the litigants and other participants with proper appellation, appropriate language, gentle tone and a fair attitude. They should avoid domineering, blunt language, rough attitude, the improper use of language, and be strictly prohibited using words which might hurt the feelings of the people or may intensify the contradiction that is not significant to the case.
However, prosecutors are often confronted with a difficult question of which one to choose: politeness or impoliteness to achieve their institutional goals and assume their responsibility. Every coin has two sides. Showing respect and sympathy on one hand has the potential to touch the defendant, making a difference in his or her confession and ethical education. On the other hand, the prosecutor might be seen as an approachable and incompetent person who can be gullible, thus hindering the trail.
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1.2 Research objectives and significance
This study looks into the impoliteness of prosecutors in courtroom discourse. Since powerful participants not only do impoliteness but are supported by the social power in doing so; a prosecutor is licensed to make accusations against and interrogate defendants to revealthe truth and maintain justice. The investigation into the use of impoliteness by prosecutors will take into account the factors above around the “licensed” and “unlicensed” impolite utterances.
Besides, given the study that there are some contexts in which speakers use common politeness strategies to express impolite meaning in institutional discourse, the study is inspired to consider cases in which how impoliteness is realized by prosecutor’s polite utterances, which is seldom examined before. Recent face, social norm and interpersonal approaches to (im)politeness alone seem unable to obtain the study’s objective, so Appraisal Theory is introduced to help solve the problem of legitimacy of prosecutor’s use of impoliteness.
With the impoliteness theory and Appraisal Theory constructing the theoretical framework and Chinese courtroom discourse selected as the data, the study seeks to explore the realizations, frequency, appropriateness, and legitimacy of impoliteness of prosecutors in the courtroom and discuss how politeness can contribute to impoliteness in the institution. It is also an attempt to examine the pragmatic functions of impoliteness and explore the close relationship between identity and impoliteness to see how the asymmetry of social structural power is reflected and how social identity is constructed in courtroom discourse. It is hoped that this dissertation can enrich the (im)politeness study in courtroom discourse.
In addition, such an empirical study leads to reflecting how impoliteness is used by prosecutors, which is expected to help regulate the use of language concerning politeness and impoliteness in Chinese courtroom, making contributions to the real world.
The aim of the study is to examine the use of impoliteness of prosecutors concerning power and discuss the legitimacy and function of it by employing Appraisal Theory under the framework of institutional impoliteness.
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2.Literature Review
2.1 Studies on Courtroom Discourse
Studies on courtroom discourse have been widely discussed for a long time, which can be traced back to ancient Greece with regards to rhetoric in speech. In the 20th century, the focus of Anglo-American legal language study was on word, sentence structure, these linguistic features. Then it evolved into the study of interaction and sociological factors including power, gender and identity. Under the interactional and sociological approaches, the interaction studies involve pragmatic theories, approaches and subjects along with conversational analysis of production and comprehension of utterances.
Viewing courtroom discourse as a process started early and evolved into a mature area. Atkinson and Drew[8] discuss the sequence structure in Anglo-American adversarial courtroom through the analysis of that between witnesses and barristers. In the book Language in the Judicial Process, Levi and Walker[9] brought together 12 papers concerned with language phenomenon in courtroom practices written by some of the influential researchers. The work covers a wide range of topics including the verbal strategies between barristers and witnesses in cross-examination, the narrative structure, the role of interpreters in bilingual courtroom. Through a global view in courtroom discourse, the authors seek to account for the role of language in legal process. The interaction among barristers, witnesses, defendants and judges is examined carefully such as the “restatement’ strategies used by barristers to control what witnesses answer.
In China, the earliest scholar who studies the interaction in courtroom discourse is Liao in his work Studies on Question-answer and Interaction in Courtroom which analyzes the language mechanism and features of interaction, offering constructive guidance to related scholars and Chinese court revolution[10].
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2.2 Studies on politeness
The issue with regards to politeness is ubiquitous over a long history across the world. All social communities have their own conventional ways of showing politeness stipulated explicitly or implicitly from addressing, greeting, asking, invitation, to dressing code and appropriate behavior. It is even believed that politeness plays a crucial role in establishing and strengthening social ties as the prerequisite and fundamental rule of normal interaction and successful cooperation between people. Significant though it is, it is only from the publication of Brown & Levinson’s seminal work in the 1970s that it has gained increasing academic interest, evolving to an inpidual subject for close examination. Over the past 40 years, there was a perceptual shift of politeness in terms of its concept, view, and methodology away from the first wave approaches to second wave approaches marked by Gino Eelen’s work: A Critique of Politeness Theories. The distinction is made by second order, theoretical, or linguistically grounded approaches to (im)politeness and first order, lay, or socially perceived approaches to the phenomenon respectively[16].
Over the past four decades politeness theory has been actively developed. The following is a brief outline of its theory development. The ‘first wave’ represented by Lakoff (1973), Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson(1987) forms its pragmatic period by the second order approach. As a pioneer of politeness research, Lakoff follows Grice’s suggestion that there are possibly other maxims involved besides those of the Cooperative Principle[3]. Leech’s early contribution to the formation of politeness theory rests in his illustration of the ‘Politeness Principle (PP)’ including 6 politeness maxims under his ‘Interpersonal Rhetoric’ framework to rescue the CP[1].
Although politeness is viewed as universal phenomenon, the cultural difference between China and west leads to differences in politeness principles. Qian criticizes Leech’s principle that in Chinese culture, instead of focusing on the cost-benefit, politeness is more of a moral thing[17]. Addressing the cultural difference, Gu adapts the conversational maxims in line withChinese culture[18]. In addition, Xu and Qian propose the politeness rules or strategies they conclude from real language[19][17].
语言学论文怎么写
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3.1 The concept of impoliteness....................................... 15
3.2 Politeness principle and Chinese polite expressions.................................... 17
3.3 Attitude System from Appraisal Theory..................................... 18
4. Methodology ......................................... 21
4.1 Data collection..................................... 21
4.2 Research tool................................................. 21
5. Impoliteness of Prosecutors in Courtroom discourse............................. 22
5.1 Prosecutor’s impoliteness violating the social norm........................... 22
5.2 The analysis of Prosecutor’s legitimized impoliteness ............................ 22
5. Impoliteness of Prosecutors in Courtroom discourse
5.1 Prosecutor’s impoliteness violating the social norm
Judicial etiquette refers to the attitude and manner of communication, polite principle and other rituals that judicial personnel (mainly judges and prosecutors) should abide by in judicial activities.
After the scrutiny of the data, it is not surprising to know that prosecutors’ breach of judicial regulations concerning (im)politeness is hardly spotted in the data. There is no misuse of appellation, no deprivation of litigious right of the participants in the proceedings, no insults, patronizing behavior, no abrupt interruption or commands beyond prosecutors’ authority or apparent irrational words, to some extent reflecting the general good personal quality of public prosecutors, the credibility and an efficient and authoritative image of procuratorial organs. In a word, there is no abuse of power and personal attack as impoliteness mortification used by prosecutors.
Although there are few cases of presumption of guilt identified in the data, technically speaking, they barely affect the image of prosecutors and judicial branch, because they are later proven appropriate by the evidence or the confession of other defendants.
语言学论文参考
6. Conclusion
6.1 Summary
In this thesis, based on the authentic data collected from the courtroom, we tentatively make a comparatively comprehensive study on prosecutor’s impoliteness in courtroom discourse. The chapter of analysis looks at the intolerable impoliteness, realizations and features of legitimized impoliteness and the management of impoliteness through politeness and concludes three pragmatic functions of prosecutor’s impoliteness. The study draws the following conclusions in responding to the research questions.
First of all, prosecutor’s unlicensed impoliteness through the abuse of power is hardly spotted, which generally embodies prosecutor’s image of civilization and authority.
The main realizations of prosecutor’s legitimized impoliteness are negative evaluation, challenge, interruption, ordering, criticize, warning in order of frequency, which has to do with the duty that prosecutors assume. Negative evaluation takes on responsibility of making accusations on defendants and their action leading to appearance in every case.
The rest force the defendant to respond in a highly restricted and face-damaging way either supported by the power behind the discourse or by power in discourse.
Specifically speaking, challenge is worked in two fundamental ways of rhetorical question and response-seeking. In terms of the domains under Attitude System, the majority of public prosecutor’s impoliteness expresses the negative emotions, but the positive feelings like sympathy and understanding are also noticed in cooperative interruption, which makes it least impolite in the category. In contrast, the interruption of overwhelming is the most impolite and the most frequently used one of this kind. Additionally, the criticize can be combined with other strategies like challenge.
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