Shi ＆ O'Halloran 2025

This article investigates how group value negotiation is constructed through the verbal and visual positioning of public prosecutors, defense lawyers, and defendants in Chinese courtroom trials. A corpus-based analysis of fifteen cases in which defendants pleaded guilty reveals that, in terms of verbal resources, public prosecutors construct themselves as appraisers for charging defendants, focusing primarily on the sufficiency and reliability of evidence, as well as positive social and legal consequences of their charging decisions. In contrast, defense lawyers construct themselves as appraisers for leniency bargaining, emphasizing positive influence of defendants’confessions and highlighting incapacity and emotional factors that triggered offence, with defendants positioning themselves as emoters via their remorseful feelings to plea for a reduced sentence. Regarding visual resources, defense lawyers and defendants engage more with judges through gaze for affiliation, although both defense lawyers and public prosecutors tend to limit their gazes and use more material-mediated gestures. The findings suggest that these distinct multimodal representations are deeply intertwined with the Chinese judicial context and specific case characteristics. This study provides new insights into the nature of multimodal courtroom argumentation within the civil law system in China, with implications for understanding courtroom discourse in other contexts.