A Study Of Language Reports And Lawyers' Effective Presentation Of Facts And Opinions

The present study probes into lawyers' effective presentation of facts and opinions through language reports in courtroom. It aims to find out the main reporting categories distributing in lawyers' courtroom discourse and investigate how language reports help lawyers to effectively present facts and opinions in courtroom.Following Thompson's functional model of language reports and based on the data collected for the present research, we identify, along the three dimensions of voice, message and attitude, four categories of voices, five categories of messages and three categories of attitudes. It is further found that there is a respective 'prototypical category' of marked highest occurrence frequency along each dimension (specified other(s)' report in voice, paraphrase in message and positive in attitude).The research shows that language reports play a vital role in lawyers' effective presentation of facts and opinions in courtroom. Lawyers, consciously or unconsciously, resort to language reports to effectively present the requisite facts and opinions in challenging evidence, constructing crime and conducting arguing. It is further revealed that the categories of language reports that lawyers employ and the facts and opinions that lawyers intend to present through reporting show some common and typical matching relations.The present study may enrich the existing body of work on language reports and may help to gain deeper insight into the use of language reports in lawyers' courtroom activities.