| The courtroom discourse which is a kind of special institutional discourse,reflecting the asymmetric power relations among the discourse subjects due to social status,educational background,legal knowledge and discourse skills.With the development of forensic linguistics in recent years,lots of scholars have paid their attention to the language activity in court.However,it is still not comprehensive to discuss the power relations between the discourse subjects in court trials from the perspective of CDA,especially in Chinese court trials.Therefore,this thesis studies power relations between the discourse subjects and the language strategies used to reflect power relations in Chinese court trials from the perspective of CDA,the thesis selects three civil cases and four criminal cases as abundant research materials from the website tingshen.court.gov.cn and the research method is qualitative method,tries to answer the following questions:This thesis attempts to study the following questions from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis:（1）In the process of Chinese court trail,what are the power relations between the judge and the plaintiff and defendant,the prosecutor and accused,the lawyer and witness?（2）What language strategies do judge,prosecutor and lawyer use to control the discourse power of the plaintiff,defendant,accused and witness?The major findings of this thesis are as follows:（1）in the Chinese court trials,due to the particularity of institutional discourse,the judge,prosecutor and lawyer have more discourse power and discourse resources before the court session.In contrast,the court restricts the discourse behavior of the litigants and witness,and the judge,prosecutor and lawyer also control the discourse of the plaintiff,defendant and witness through various discourse strategies and discourse resources.（2）The judge uses the questioning,interruption and meta commentary to limit the discourse power of plaintiffs and defendants;the prosecutor uses the linguistic strategies of topic guidance,contrast and reformulation to control the accused’s discourse power;the lawyer uses the leading questions,reformulation and interruption tocontrol the witness’ discourse power.However,the plaintiff,defendant and witness have little power to use the discourse strategies which restrict the discourse power of the judge,prosecutor and lawyer.It embodies the asymmetric power relations among three discourse subjects in the Chinese court.This thesis reveals the existing power relations in Chinese court trial from the perspective of CDA.This is not only broadens the studies of scope of CDA in Chinese courtroom discourse,but also enriches its application in the court trials. |
