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.