The defendant’s dilemma: Being cooperative without compromising their defence

In Chinese criminal trials, defendants face the dual tasks of providing information as “an object of interrogation” and defending themselves as a defendant. Against such a backdrop, they face the dilemma of being cooperative and defensive at the same time. This research investigates the practices they use to navigate this dilemma. A corpus linguistic analysis identifies two key features in defendants’ language: negation, and words associated with narration. These point to three main practices: defending with a (partial) denial, accounting for an “unexpected” lack of knowledge, and persuading through an uninvited narrative, practices which are explored through a fine-grained conversation analysis. Linguistic devices such as indirect responses, double verb constructions, extreme case formulations, and the mood adverb “也 ( ye )” contribute to the negotiation of the dilemma. It is found that a balance of defence and cooperation is key to a defensive response in the Chinese courtroom.