Discourse Markers And Their Constraints On Interpretation Of Courtroom Questioning: A Pragma-Cognitive Approach

This thesis is a descriptive and interpretive study of discourse markers in courtroom questioning and their functionality in the interpretation of courtroom questioning. Both English and Chinese data are used in the analysis.It is argued that discourse markers are relevance constraints on the interpretation of courtroom questioning, that is, they contribute to, by means of relevance constraints, the interpretation of such forensic linguistic phenomenon. To classify discourse markers used in the setting of courtroom questioning and to elaborate their functions in such contexts, a pragma-cognitive framework is constructed on the basis of both Blakemore's (1987, 2002) relevance-theoretic approach to the study of discourse markers in everyday communicative situations and our observations of a number of discourse markers in courtroom questioning.It is found that three classes of discourse markers are often involved in courtroom questioning, that is, ideational markers, participation markers and illocutionary performatives. The functionality of these three classes of discourse markers in the interpretation of courtroom questioning is analyzed on the basis of some examples in courtroom interaction according to the proposed pragma-cognitive framework. We find that in courtroom questioning discourse markers are often employed by questioners to constrain hearers' search for relevance. The picture varies with the three classes of discourse markers in terms of their general functions, though. Ideational markers are conducive to revealing speakers' communicative intention encoded in their utterance; with ideational markers, speakers can make their messages or personal judgments more manifest to hearers in courtroom questioning. Participation markers mark transitions oftopics and control of conversational turns in courtroom questioning; they facilitate hearers' search for relevance in courtroom interaction. Illocutionary performatives affect the understanding of the illocutionary force encoded in the utterances and constrain the interpretation of the utterances in courtroom questioning.The present study sheds light on how the application of these linguistic markers turns the process of courtroom questioning into a comprehensible and strategic interaction.