Evidentiality In American Lawyers’ Closing Argument

Evidentiality, an important linguistic phenomenon, refers to the speaker’s expression about the source of information/knowledge or the speaker’s assessment of the reliability of that information/knowledge. The linguistic forms of evidentiality are called evidentials or evidential markers. The study of evidentialiy not only helps to reveal the nature and functions of language, but also "is an effective method in discourse analysis"(Hu,1995). The emphasis of different types of evidentials is different in different genres. It is a good way to study the discourse features of a certain genre through the study of evidentiality.Law cannot do without language. It is absolutely necessary to study law from the perspective of language (Liao,2004). Closing argument, an integral component of the entire trial presentation, is the lawyer’s last opportunity to convince the jury and the judge to make a verdict in favor of its own side. Though the analysis of evidentials used in American lawyers’closing argument, this thesis attempts to explain how evidentiality makes the closing argument more reliable and convincing.This thesis adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods. On the basis of Chafe’s model of evidentiality, this thesis classifies evidentials into5types, namely belief evidentials, inferring evidentials, hearsay evidentials, hedge evidentials and expectation evidentials. On the basis of the classification of evidentials, this thesis chooses18pieces of authentic closing argument (about109,189words) as the corpus.Previous studies on the development of the study of evidentiality are reviewed. Researchers study evidentiality from a wide range of perspectives, such as typology, cognition, pragmatics, language acquisition. There is rarely study of evidentiality from the perspective of discourse analysis. It is rather a new approach to study evidentiality in the field of forensic linguistics. The thesis reviews the previous studies of closing argument and introduces the definition, features and functions. It is found that there is an internal relationship between evidentiality and discourse features of closing argument. Evidentiality can reflect the discourse features of closing argument.On the basis of Chafe’s model of evidentiality and Swales’and Bhatia’s theory of genre, the thesis discusses the classification and distributions of different types of evidentials in American lawyers’closing argument. The statistical analysis indicates that the frequencies of different types of evidentials are different. Different types of evidentials provide different sources of information and modes of knowledge, which have different functions in closing argument.Every genre has its own internal structure and lexicogrammatical forms. The preference of different types of evidentials in different genres can reflect the discourse features of closing argument. Distributions and frequencies of different types of evidentials in closing argument, which are different from that of evidentials in other genres, indicate the special discourse features of closing argument. In closing argument what types of evidentials lawyers prefer to use can reflect the discourse features of closing argument.This thesis is significant both in theory and in practice. In theory, the thesis widens the studying domain of the study of evidentiality, and brings evidentiality in linguistic field into the study of forensic discourse. The evidential analysis can be used as a new approach to the genre analysis and applicable to the study of other discourses. In practice, through the data analyses, the findings of the thesis will provide a theoretical guide for the lawyers to instruct the writing of closing arguments to enhance the persuasiveness.