A Study On The Impoliteness Of Prosecutors In Courtroom Discourse

In recent years,people have realized that impoliteness is not a marginalized phenomenon and should be given the same attention as politeness.Based on this understanding,a number of systematic studies of impoliteness have emerged in the academic field.Set in a special location and governed by specific procedures and goal,courtroom discourse is a typical institutional discourse full of conflicting talk.At present,although there is some research on the impoliteness in courtroom discourse,there are few remarkable achievements and few studies concentrating on the impoliteness of prosecutors.In addition,the existing research only analyzes either politeness or impoliteness,ignoring the co-existence of the two.The significance of studying the “impoliteness” in this paper is that,different from the use of impoliteness by people in daily communication,the prosecutor has the legitimized right to do impoliteness supported by the institutional power and will deliberately conduct the offensive behaviors to achieve the institutional goals.This paper adopts the impoliteness framework of Culpeper and Bousfield and the descriptive and empirical approaches to study the Chinese courtroom discourse with the aim to improve the public prosecutor’s understanding and standard use of “impoliteness”.Based on the impoliteness framework of Culpeper and Bousfield,this paper uses the Praat software as the research tool to analyze 31 cases on CCTV12 Trial Scene.First,we analyze the intolerable impoliteness and legitimized impoliteness consisting of negative evaluation,interruption,challenge,warning,orders,and criticize;the management of impoliteness through polite principles and polite expressions.Then the concept of power and the attitude system in the Appraisal Theory were used to analyze the characteristics of the public prosecutor’s licensed impoliteness and the pragmatic functions.It is found that the pragmatic functions of prosecutor’s impoliteness include emotive,identity construction and coercion.Prosecutors do not only depend on the power behind discourse,but also constructs power in discourse to achieve impoliteness and the latter has better communication effect.The prosecutor is expected to regulate the appropriate use of impoliteness and avoid impoliteness constructed on the abuse of power.This paper aims to enrich the institutional impoliteness research and helps regulate the use of appropriate use of“impoliteness”,leading to the benefit and reducing the negative impact on society.