Intentional Injury or Self-Defense? Multimodal Presentation of Semantic Waves in Legal Counseling Discourse in China's Community Correction

This article conducts a digital multimodal analysis of legal counseling discourse in the community correction setting in China. Drawing on the model of paralanguage developed by Martin and Zappavigna within systemic functional linguistics, this analysis focuses on the gestural paralanguage used by legal counselors during the process of legal counseling in an intentional injury case in which the defendant claimed that his behavior was self-defense. Specifically, it explores the semovergent paralanguage and sonovergent paralanguage that synchronize with semantic waves, aiming to investigate how legal counselors utilize paralanguage-synchronized semantic waves to enhance the effectiveness of legal counseling and facilitate the offender's accumulation of legal knowledge. By adopting a digital multimodal discourse approach, this study identifies the distributional differences between semovergent paralanguage and sonovergent paralanguage in relation to the fluctuation of semantic waves. The findings highlight that the expression of semantic waves is not limited to verbal language alone, but rather relies on a combination of various semiotic choices. These findings have significant implications for improving the use of paralanguage in legal counseling and contribute to the advancement of research in the field of forensic discourse analysis.