Courtroom Questioning Adapted to Psychological Motivations

Abstract

This paper focuses on analyzing courtroom questioning as a dynamic process of adaptation to the psychological motivations, which is complicated by the constantly changing communicative context. By analyzing the data collected from the Chinese courtroom trials, such strategies as repetition, reformulation and juxtaposition are found in the process of questioners’ making adaptation to their psychological motivations. By carefully choosing the strategies catering to different psychological motivations, questioners can successfully realize adaptation so as to achieve their specific communicative goals.