| Courtroom discourse is a type of institutional discourse which is purpose-oriented in a special context.In a trial,as the active questioner,either the lawyer or the prosecutor will ask questions in favor of their parties in order to obtain the information that they want.Presupposition is one of the most common pragmatic strategies used by lawyers in courtroom inquiry.Based on such presupposition features as covertness,subjectivity,unidirectionality and defeasibility,lawyers can set presupposition traps in courtroom inquiry to guide defendants or witnesses to answer questions in their own way.Taking the presupposition in courtroom inquiry discourse as the research object,this thesis attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What presupposition triggers do lawyers mainly apply to achieve their aims in courtroom inquiry?(2)What are the functions of presupposition in lawyers’ courtroom inquiry discourse?This thesis adopts qualitative analysis method to analyze and interpret the presupposition triggers in courtroom inquiry discourse.The research data used in this thesis is from four foreign law series TV series.They are The Practice,The Good Wife,Silk,and Boston Legal.After the analysis of the data,it is found that:(1)during the trial,lawyers pose questions with hidden presuppositions which are not easy to be discovered by defendants and witnesses through the use of presupposition triggers for the purpose of achieving their goals;and these presupposition triggers commonly used by lawyers include factive verbs,implicative verbs,change of state verbs,yes/no questions,alternative questions,WH-questions and temporal adverbial clauses;(2)the main functions of presupposition in courtroom inquiry discourse is to protect the legal rights and interests of the parties and improve the persuasiveness of lawyers’ discourse.It is hoped that the present study can help defendants or witnesses avoid falling into the traps of lawyers and broaden the research scope of pragmatics and legal language. |
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