本文是一篇語言學碩士論文，本文研究了美國商事糾紛庭審中評價資源的使用規律，各參與者使用的異同以及庭審中沖突話語的模式和各參與者在其中扮演的角色，對于豐富評價理論的使用和擴展沖突話語的研究有著深刻意義，同時也給我國的法律從業者和赴英美法系國家的經商者以借鑒。

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Aristotle once said that:“Man is a social animal,and an individual cannot exist alone without society.”This means that it is difficult for us to avoid connections withothers,and society is complex and dynamic.Of cause there is a harmonious coexistencebetween people,but conflicts and differences are inevitable.People cannot avoidconflicts due to differences in interests,viewpoints,positions,and personal preferences,which means that conflicts are everywhere,and where there are conflicts,there will beconflicting discourse,like Kuo(1992)points out that conflict represents an omnipresent,normative,and functionally indispensable element of all social systems.

As the center and focus of litigation,the court trial follows the basic mode of"confrontation-judgment"(Liu,2005),so"conflict"is the essential attribute of the trial,and is intuitively reflected through one party's opposition,disagreement,or lack ofsupport for the other party's discourse.This type of adversarial language and speechbehavior,such as debate,opposition,dissent,and rebuttal,caused by differences ofopinion among participants during the trial process,is called"trial conflict talk".Andthe court itself exists to resolve conflicts,which means that the court is filled withconflicts,and conflicts can start,intensify,or end due to the use of language resources.Therefore,using appraisal system as a framework to analyze trial conflict talk canreveal how the use of appraisal resources affects trial conflict talk,as well as howparticipants use appraisal resources to achieve their goals in conflict discourse in court.Statistics shows that many researches about courtroom discourse has done,but fewresearchers study it under the guidance of appraisal theory with combination of thediscourse type of conflict talk.

1.2 Research Significance

This study holds substantial significance,contributing meaningful theoreticalinsights while offering practical applications.Theoretically speaking,this researchcombined courtroom discourse and conflict talk under the direction of appraisal theory,which broaden the usage of appraisal theory and deepen people’s understanding ofconflict talk happens in courtroom discourse.

It is remarkable that a lot of researches have been done using appraisal theory toanalyze courtroom discourse.But the current research and analysis using appraisaltheory to analyze courtroom discourse is not systematic enough,often only using asingle analysis system,which is difficult to present the complete appearance ofcourtroom discourse.Secondly,the analysis of trial participants is not comprehensiveenough and is often limited to a single role such as judges and lawyers.In addition,theselection of types of courtroom discourse is often limited to criminal cases,and there isalmost no research on analyzing commercial dispute court hearings,nor is there anexplanation of whether there are differences in the discourse of different types ofcourtroom discourses.And as a important language phenomenon,conflict talk is rarelytreated as a research object in researches about courtroom discourse,even thoughconflict talk happens so often in courtroom.Herein lies the fundamental theoreticalcontribution of this study.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Literature Review on Courtroom Discourse

2.1.1 The Definition of Courtroom Discourse

As the study of forensic language is gradually advancing,courtroom discourse hasbecome an important research focus of many researchers.And in China,Liao Meizhen(2003)gives an definition to what is courtroom discourse,that is any kinds ofdiscourse happens among the communication among participants in the actual courttrial.So,court discourse can be divided in two different directions:written language andoral language.The former one is mainly about the legal documents,court files,and anypaper works within court environment.And the other one is about oral interactionbetween the participants in court trails or happens within the consulting process.Socourt discourse is abundant,dynamic and interactive.

2.1.2 Previous Studies on Courtroom Discourse

Prior to the establishment of forensic linguistics as an independent discipline,legallanguage research primarily focused on rhetorical expression.Aristotle emerges as thepioneering scholar of courtroom discourse.In his seminal work Rhetoric,hemeticulously detailed methods for enhancing litigation effectiveness,advocating thatorators must first master the subject matter,comprehend behavioral motives andpsychological factors,before employing appropriate syntactic structures and discourserhythms.Significantly,he championed concise and accessible legal speech asfundamental to persuasive advocacy.

2.2 Literature Review on Appraisal Theory

2.2.1 Previous Studies on Appraisal Theory

Before anyone who gives an definition to the concept“Appraisal Theory”,a teamled by James Martin has done a project called“Write It Right”,which has made an greatcontribution to the development of appraisal theory.As Wang Zhenghua(2001)hasmention that their project initially focused on the evaluation expression in narrative andliterary criticism,and then the project progressively expanded to analyze diverse texttypes,which systematically cataloguing linguistic resources for evaluative discourse.And the foundational work of this team aroused the interest of many scholars:Coffin(1997)applied appraisal theory to social practice analysis,while Eggins and Slade(1997)demonstrated the theory in examining casual conversation as structuredinteraction.Martin(1997)has put forward his thinking about functional grammar andappraisal.And In 2000,Martin introduced this theory to more scholars by releasing hisbook Beyond Exchange:Appraisal System in English.What really gave this theory ananalyze system is by Martin and White's(2005),they comprehensively articulateappraisal theory from three core systems(attitude,engagement,graduation),whichsignificantly advanced both appraisal research and Systemic Functional Linguistics as awhole.

Wang Zhenhua(2001)has done a research,in which further explanations andextensions have been provided for the framework,scope of application,and case studiesof appraisal theory.After this,he once again demonstrated the applicability,systematicity,and practicality of evaluation theory in analyzing texts,and have an seriesof research using appraisal theory.In these studies,he applied the subsystems ofappraisal theory to the analysis of news discourse,analyzing the attitudes that characterswant to express and the intensity of their expressions,and further expanding and proving the universality of appraisal theory in analyzing texts.

Chapter Three Theoretical Frame Work........................26

3.1 An Overview of Appraisal Theory................................26

3.2 Attitude System...........................27

Chapter 4 Research Methodology.....................................33

4.1 Research Questions......................................33

4.2 Data Collection.........................................34

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion........................39

5.1 General Distribution of Three Aspects of Appraisal Resources.........................39

5.2 The Specific Distribution of Each Sub-Resources....................41

5.2.1 The Specific Distribution of Attitude Resources.................42

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion

5.1 General Distribution of Three Aspects of Appraisal Resources

An overview of the results of the study is important for the subsequentinterpretation of the results and is the basis for subsequent discussions.In this chapter,the overall distribution of identified appraisal resources for different cases are presentedto show the feature of the use of appraisal resources in conflict talk happening incourtroom discourse.As shown in the chart,an integrated distribution of three appraisalresources is introduced first and shows a whole picture of court trail conflict talk.

Statistically,the engagement resources take up the dominant role in all eight cases,reaching over one half of the entirety;therefore,engagement resources will be discussedin the first position below.At the same time,what comes next is graduation system,with slightly more than 20%of the whole figure,showing similar characteristics withremaining attitudinal resources which only takes part 19.7%of all the annotatedappraisal resources.Therefore,why do the three different appraisal resources show theabove distribution characteristics in the trial conflict talk,and how is this related to thecharacteristics of the courtroom discourse?

Chapter Six Conclusion

6.1 Major Findings

This study focuses on the use of appraisal resources and the roles played byparticipants in conflict talk in American commercial contract dispute courtroomdiscourse,guided by appraisal theory.The study also examines the impact of appraisalresource use on conflict talk.Before conducting the research,the author's expectationwas that there would be a significant use of appraisal resources in courtroom discourse,and the emergence,intensification,and termination of conflicting talk would beinfluenced by the participants'use of evaluative resources.By answering the researchquestions raised in this article,the author has verified previous hypotheses and furtherdiscovered the characteristics of appraisal resource use and courtroom conflict discoursein subsequent discussions,which are presented in the following points.

Firstly,in the courtroom discourse of commercial contract disputes in the UnitedStates,the use of attitude resources,such as judgment resources and appreciationresources,is the most important way to express attitude.The frequency of usingappreciation resources is close to judgment resources,and the use of affect resources isthe least frequent.This is mainly because in court trials,neither the plaintiff nor thedefendant tends to directly express their emotions,especially in commercial trials wherefacts are more emphasized.So both the plaintiff and the defendant tend to use judgmentresources to make negative evaluations of facts or each other's actions and statements,while making positive evaluations of their own actions,in order to create a contrast andachieve the goal of gaining an advantage in the conflict.Judges,as neutral andadjudicators,tend to use objective evaluation methods or judgment resources to makejudgments on facts and the statements of both parties.

reference(omitted)