Liao[3] defines courtroom discourse as “an activity that happens in a specific place and isconducted by discourse participants with different purposes according to some specificprocedures and rules in such a way that aims at convincing each other.” Liao’s definition ofcourtroom discourse is applied in this thesis and a detailed introduction to the development ofcourtroom discourse is given in the following part.Stygall[4] classifies the studies in legal context into three categories: language as object,language as process, and language as instrument. The development of studies on courtroomdiscourse has also experienced the three stages.
Fig.3.1 The analytical framework of the present research
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2.2 Previous Studies on Narrative in Courtroom
2.2.1 Previous Studies on Narrative
In terms of narrative, two important concepts need to be clarified firstly. One is “story”,another is “discourse”. Genette[21] in the New Narrative Discourse states that “the story is allthe events being told”. James[22] points out that the story is “the content of the narrative. Storyis composed of characters, events and backgrounds”. Discourse is “a set of techniques used totell stories, including vision, sound, duration, frequency and so on.” Genette[21] holds the viewthat “narrative” refers to “the spoken or written discourse that tells about these events”, and“narrating” refers to “the action that produces these discourse.”
In 1969, Todorov[23] first proposed the term “narratology” in Grammaire Decameron anddefined it as “the scientific study of narrative works.” Nevertheless, as early as in the ancientGreek period, there were studies on narrative. Shen[24] points out that the plot has already beendiscussed in Aristotle’s Poetics. In the 1820s, Propp[25], the representative of Russianformalism, set a precedent for the formalism of narrative. Under the influence of Russianformalism, scholars from various countries have published a series of theoretical writings andcritical essays on narrative. A large number of scholars in French worked in the structuralismfield in the 1860s and gradually formed two approaches to narrative research. Todorov[26],Barthes[27], and other scholars focus on the structure of narrative works, highlighting thestructural rules and connections between the narrative elements. While Genette[21] and otherscholars take narrative discourse as the research object. Genette explores the relationshipbetween story and the action of narration from angles of narrative perspective, mode, time,tense, etc. When narratology spread from France to countries such as Britain and the UnitedStates, scholars mostly concentrated on the study on rhetoric skills of narrative works. Afterthe 1980s, narratology has got further development, resulting in interdisciplinary researchessuch as rhetorical narratology, feminist narratology and so on. The research on narratology inthis period is called “post-classical narratology”. Compared with the previous studies onnarratology, post-classical narratology emphasizes the connection between narrative inliterary works and society, history, culture, politics and so on. At present, there are more and more research approaches such as film narratology, drama narratology, music narratology,which has greatly enriched narratology theories.
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3 Theoretical Framework........................................ 13
3.1 The Hierarchy Narrative Structure of Narrative in
