A Study On The Construction Of Facts Of Reported Speech In Criminal Court

In recent years,scholars have gradually entered into in-depth research on legal language in China,which makes the dynamic research on legal language become one of the important fields and the court discourse attract wide attention.In court interaction,reported speech is a frequent linguistic phenomenon,because in litigation,different subjects,such as judges,prosecutors,defenders,and defendants,must participate in the previous speeches of others and respond at the same time.And how does the reported speech in court influence the construction of facts? To address the issue,this thesis will study the reported speech in criminal court from the narrative perspective,which includes the analysis on the distribution and characteristics of reported speech in criminal court from narrative dimension and the corresponding influence on the construction of facts in court.There are three main chapters in this thesis.Chapter one mainly explores the relationship between reported speech and the construction of factual events in criminal court,as well as the analytical framework of this paper.Based on previous research,this chapter firstly defines the concept of “reported speech” and its specific types,and then emphasizes the narrative feature of factual constructions in court.Narrative speech is the fundamental way of describing the facts of a case,and reported speech is one of the main ways of narrative speech,and thus there is a connection between factual construction and reported speech.Based on this,this thesis proposes a narrative approach on reported speech study,and further adopts these three dimensions of Langacker’s Construal Theory to take the research which include the viewpoint,foreground-background,and Specificity.At the same time,combined with the characteristics of reported speech in court,this thesis divides the viewpoint into three subclasses: speaker-centered viewpoint,speaker-observation viewpoint,and mixed viewpoint;and the foreground-background combination into two subclasses: foreground and background,and the Specificity into three subclasses: low,medium,and high,which consist of the analysis framework of this thesis.Chapter Two focuses on an empirical investigation of the uses of reported speech in criminal court and its narrative characteristics.Firstly,the distribution of reported speech types in criminal court is empirically studied,and it is found that indirect reported speech is most frequent,next to which are direct reported speech and speech act reported speech.However,the usage rate of free direct reported speech and free indirect reported speech is significantly lower,indicating that different reported speech types have different effects in courtroom narrative.Therefore,this thesis continues to examine the narrative dimension of each type of reported speech.The results show that:(1)All types of reported speech mainly use speaker-observation viewpoint,and the speaker-centered viewpoint or mixed viewpoint are relatively rare;(2)Direct reported speech and free indirect reported speech mainly act as foreground,speech act reported speech mainly acts as background,while indirect reported speech and free direct reported speech’s foreground and background differentiation are relatively balanced,with a slightly higher frequency in the background;(3)Direct reported speech is dominant in high-detailed expression,while indirect reported speech,free indirect reported speech,and speech act reported speech are mainly shown in medium-detailed expression,and free direct reported speech has an advantage in low-detailed expression.Based on these results,this thesis proposes that the narrative dimensions of each type of reported speech in the courtroom are not separate and need to be comprehensively observed in order to fully demonstrate the narrative effect of reported speech.Therefore,the thesis matches the reported speech types with multiple narrative dimensions and extracts 15 common structures,namely,reported speech narrative patterns.Through case analysis,the thesis finds that the narrative effects of reported speech are essentially determined by the identity of the reporter and the purpose of use.In the third chapter,the subject use and the fact construction strategies of the reported speech in criminal court are mainly concerned.It firstly examines the narrative patterns of the reported speech used by the four subjects in the criminal court,the judge,the prosecutor,the defender and the defendant,and then explores the narrative strategies of the fact construction of the four subjects with the uses of reported speech.The main findings are as follows:(1)The strategy of judges is to highlight the exclusive authoritative narrative and construct the procedural facts,to conduct court induction and ensure an effective response,to adjust the narrative rhythm then improve the efficiency of the trial,to activate the relevant cognitive elements and improve the effectiveness of open questioning;(2)Prosecutors prefers to use the reported speech to reproduce the story of the event,the implementation of objective obligations,at the same time,it’s to hide the subjectivity after the adjustment of focus,in order to verify the validity of the inquiry,in addition,by highlighting alternative views and constructing evidence facts,it’s to adjust the debate theme or provide proof support under the narrative confrontation;(3)The fact construction tendency of defenders is to compress the refutation space,develop the narrative confrontation,show the details of the discourse,and to establish the reasoning basis;(4)for defendants,the reported speech can expand the space for dialogue and consultation,place the responsibility to him,highlight the differences in power,and seek an alliance of the audience on the site.