A Study of Modal Adverbs in Chinese Lawyers’ Arguments of Defence
Abstract: Lawyers’ arguments play an important role in Chinese courtroom, for counsels present the opinions to inform and convince the judges. In order to achieve this goal, lawyers often choose some linguistic strategies, of which modal adverbs are one of the most widely used. This thesis proposes an analysis of modal adverbsin Chinese lawyers’ arguments of defence, in terms of their types and frequency of use. Statistics shows that among all the modal adverbs that appear in the collected arguments of defence, those of the assertive mood (which belongs to the category of the epistemic mood), together with those of affirmative mood and disaffirmative mood (both of which belong to the category of the declarative mood) take as much as 67.5%. The assertive mood is often associated with the affirmative or disaffirmative mood. The use of these three major types of modal adverbs help construct the modality of Chinese lawyer’s arguments of defence.
Keywords: Modal Adverbs, Chinese Lawyers’ Arguments of Defence, Types of Modal Adverbs, Frequency of Use
Contents
Abstract 1
摘 要 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Aim of the Present Study 3
1.2 Source of Data 3
1.3 Organization of the Thesis 4
2 Literature Review 4
2.1 Modal Adverbs 4
2.2 Previous Research on Lawyers’ Arguments in the Court room 5
3 Modal Adverbs in Chinese Lawyers’ Arguments of Defence 7
3.1 Total Frequency of Use of Modal Adverbs in Chinese Lawyers’ Arguments 7
3.2 Types of Modal Adverbs in Chinese Lawyers’ Arguments 8
3.2.1 Functional Mood (功能语气) 9
3.2.2 Evaluative Mood(评价语气) 11
3.2.3 Emotional Mood（情感语气） 15
3.3 Frequency of Different Types of Modal Adverbs 17
4 Conclusion 20
References 21
