| Civil courtroom discourse is a kind of institutional discourse with strong interaction.In civil courtroom,the speech acts of the judge and the litigants are goal oriented.The interaction between the participants in the proceedings is mainly based on oral discourse.In order to maintain their own interests and fulfill discourse goals,the litigants will strive for their own right to express their own opinions.Linguistic expression is closely related to discourse stance.As has been put forward by Du Bois(2007)“One of the most important things we do with words is take a stance”.Both stance expression and stance construction need to rely on certain discourse resources and discourse strategies.Formulation is both a discourse phenomenon and discourse strategy frequently used in courtroom discourse interaction.Based on Liao Meizhen’s goal-driven principle and Du Bois’ s stance triangle,the study constructs an analytical framework suitable for this thesis.By combining qualitative and quantitative methods,this thesis analyzes the judges’ formulation discourse involving 12 cases of civil courtroom discourse,aiming to study the stance constructed by the judges in their formulation discourse.The thesis aims at answering three questions in the following lines:Firstly,what are the linguistic characteristics of judges’ formulation discourse in Chinese civil courtroom?Secondly,what stance do judges construct when they formulate in Chines civil courtroom?Thirdly,what are the constraining factors of judges’ stance construction in their formulation discourse in Chines civil courtroom?According to the analysis of the data collected,it is found:Firstly,in terms of the linguistic characteristics used by judges in their formulation,they can be divided into two levels,namely,lexical level and sentential level.Specifically speaking,the lexical level includes verbs,adverbs,adjectives,phrases and conjunctions.The sentential level includes three aspects,say,yes-no questions,tag questions and wh-questions.The frequency of the two kinds of linguistic resources used is different from each other,while both are used to construct stance in judges’ formulation discourse.Secondly,judges construct four types of stance in their formulation discourse,namely,evaluative stance,affective stance,epistemic stance and(dis)alignment stance.And the frequency of those stance constructed by judges varies.Among them,the most frequently constructed stance by judges in their formulation discourse are epistemic stance and alignment stance,while the least frequently constructed stance is affective stance.As for the evaluative stance,judges construct the positive evaluation stance and the negative evaluation stance in their formulation discourse.While the affective stance is mainly constructed by implicit means,other stance is constructed by explicit and implicit means.Finally,in regard to the constraining factors of stance construction in judges’ formulation discourse,there are mainly two aspects,including the need for courtroom interaction and different interactive proposes.Due to the lack of trial experience and relevant legal knowledge,some litigants may keep silent or answer the questions randomly in the courtroom interaction,which requires the judges to construct stance in their formulation discourse to make sure that the civil trial activities can proceed successfully.The analysis of the stance construction of the judges’ formulation discourse in civil courtroom can enrich the research objects relevant to stance stance.This study provides a research example for research on stance and research of discourse analysis,broadens the research scope,and provides a new research perspective for institutional discourse research. |
PDF Full Text Request