A Study On Discourse Power In The Supreme Court Of The United States Related To Business Cases On The Principle Of Goal-direction

Power is embodied and realized through discourse,and institutional discourse is an important resource of power in contemporary society.Courtroom has the highest institutionalization,the research of courtroom discourse has become the focus of legal linguistics.The discourse of the Supreme Court of the United States is one of the most typical institutional discourse,thus researching its discourse power is necessary.On the basis of the Principle of Goal-direction put forward by Liao(2005),the paper uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to systematically examine oral transcripts of all business cases of the Supreme Court in 2017,in total 17,from the perspective of goal relationship,the initial and response of goal(question-answer),strategies to pursue goal as well as the realization of goal.It mainly discusses the discourse power asymmetry between 4 pairs of courtroom participants,the Justices-other courtroom participants,counsel-counsel,Justice-Justice,counsel-amici curiae,but also analyzes discourse features of each participant.The results shows,firstly,the discourse power asymmetry between the Justices and other courtroom participants is embodied in the Justices' questioning initial,forms of questions,the responses from other participants and the Justices' strategies to control turns.Secondly,the discourse power asymmetry among counsels is mainly manifested through the realization of goals,the Justices' discourse control against the wining counsels is less than against the losing counsels in most cases.Thirdly,regarding the discourse power asymmetry among the Justices,male Justices have larger discourse power than female Justices,and conservative Justices have higher power than liberal Justices.And Chief Justice Roberts is also responsible for procedural discourse and enjoys the highest discourse power.Finally,discourse power disparity between amici curiae and counsels is not obvious.This study helps to recognize the power asymmetry during the process of oral arguments,to make Justices better maintain justice in the courtroom through discourse and to contribute a little to the development of legal linguistics in China.