A study of interruption in Chinese criminal courtroom discourse

Abstract

This article is based on a corpus of transcripts of four criminal courtroom trials in China. It investigates interruption in the Chinese criminal courtroom discourse as a highly institutionalized and strongly goal-oriented discourse. The study focuses on the number, functions, causes, and distribution of interruptions as well as their correlation with the Chinese legal system and legal culture. Interruptions in Chinese courtroom trials are substantially asymmetrical in terms of the number, functions, and causes in the sense that prosecutors interrupt the most and defense lawyers the least, with judges being in the middle but somewhat closer to prosecutors. A defendant is the most interrupted party. The dominant side, represented by the judge and the prosecutor, interrupts to exercise control by stretching the Gricean maxims to the extreme. In contrast, a defendant interrupts mainly for cooperation or to insist on their right to speak. I also attempt to explain the imbalance by referring to the Chinese judicial system and legal culture and compare the interruption phenomena in Chinese criminal trials with those I observed in the United States.

Perceptions of extended concurrent speech in Mandarin

“…Gao (2012) described varying signals of yielding the floor. Ulijn and Li (1995), Li (1999Li ( , 2001 and Liao (2009) presented interruptions in different discourses. Liu (2004) and Kuang (2005) teased out the varieties of interruptions in Chinese.…”

Interruption Elicits Laughter: Cooperative and Intrusive Interruptions in a Chinese Talk Show Host’s Conversation

“…The definitions of interruption have been approached both from sequential (Beattie, 1982;Ferguson, 1977;Liao 2009;Schegloff, 2000) and interactional perspectives (Coon & Schwanenflugel, 1996;Goldberg, 1990;Hutchby, 1992;). In this instance, due to the institutional power entitled to the first host, it is by default that the turn floor is under the control of the first host, and any attempt to prevent her from talking is regarded as interruption.…”

“…In doctor-patient exchanges, "physicians use more non-supportive interruptions than patients; patients failed to interrupt physicians more frequently than vice versa, even more so with senior physicians than with doctors-in-training" (Menz & Al-Roubaie, 2008, p. 645). As is the same case in the criminal courtroom, Liao (2009) investigated the number, functions, causes, and distribution of interruption in a Chinese criminal courtroom and found that prosecutors interrupt the most often, the defence lawyers the least, while the defendant is the most frequently interrupted party.…”

“…Interruption has been repeatedly regarded as the indicator of dominance and power, either in casual talk (Teasta, 1988) or in institutional contexts, such as during medical interviews (Buttny, 1996;Menz & Al-Roubaie, 2008;O'Reilly, 2006O'Reilly, , 2008, parent-child talks (Lu & Huang, 2006), courtroom examinations (Liao, 2009(Liao, , 2013Ng, 2015), phone-in talks (Hutchby, 1992;Lee, 2002;Li & Lee, 2013), and television interviews (Aznarez-Mauleon, 2013;Beattie, 1982;Hutchby, 1991Hutchby, , 1996Hutchby, , 2013Song, 2016;Thornborrow, 2007Thornborrow, , 2014Zhao & Gantz, 2003). The dominant party designated with institutional power tends to practise interruption in interactional conversations, while this is not always the case with institutional settings.…”

Doing ‘being interrupted’ in political talk

“…Overlap has been referred to as a ‘control device’ (West & Zimmerman 1977:527) because speakers who succeed in usurping the current speaker's turn-at-talk may develop their own topics and take the reins of an interaction (see e.g. Bogoch & Danet 1984; Carbó 1992; Ainsworth-Vaughn 1995; Li, Krysko, Desroches, & Deagle 2004; Liao 2009). While overlap is often ‘competitive’ (Schegloff 2000), it may also serve a supportive or affiliative function, conveying involvement and helping interactants to build camaraderie (see e.g.…”