Attribution and judicial control in Chinese court judgments: a corpus-based study
Issue: Vol 19 No. 1 (2012)
Journal: International Journal of Speech Language and the Law
Subject Areas: Linguistics
Abstract:
The present corpus-based study deals with attribution in court judgments from three perspectives: the forms of appellate judgments, authorial voices in appellate judgments, and attribution to the sources of law. The results in the study are threefold. First, all the appellate judgments from Mainland China and Taiwan are the judgment of the court; both single-opinion judgments and multiple-opinion judgments are found in the appellate judgments from Hong Kong. Secondly, only institutional self-references are found in the appellate judgments of Mainland China and Taiwan. Thirdly, more divergent forms in terms of sources of law are found in Hong Kong in contrast with Mainland China and Taiwan. Through the analysis of the results obtained in this study, the author argues that in Hong Kong the individual judge’s power is foregrounded and what is backgrounded is the court. In contrast, in the Mainland China and Taiwan judgments, one can only hear the voices of the court rather than those of the individual judge. The discursive presentation of focusing on different power agents can find its root in social construction, because the discursive structure is constrained by and representative of social structure.
Author: Le Cheng
References :
Bhatia, V.K. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View. London: Continuum.
Chen, J. (1999) Chinese Law: Towards an Understanding of Chinese Law, its Nature and Development. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
Chen, J. (2008) Chinese Law: Context and Transformation. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004165045.i-772
Chen, J. (2011) Constitutional judicialization and popular constitutionalism in China: Are we there yet? In Guanghua Hu (ed.) The Development of the Chinese Legal System: Change and Challenges 3-25. London: Routledge.
Cheng, L. (2007) A discursive contrast of court judgments in mainland China and Hong Kong. In Proceedings of 8th Biennial Conference on Forensic Linguistics/Language and Law, University of Washington, Seattle, 12–15 July 2007.
Cheng, L. (2010) A semiotic interpretation of genre: court judgments as an example. Semiotica 182: 89–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/semi.2010.053
Cheng, L. and Sin, K.K. (2007) Contrastive analysis of Chinese and American court judgments. In K. Kredens and S. Goźdź-Roszkowski (eds.) Language and the Law: International Outlooks 325–356. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Clark, R. and Ivanic, R. (1997) The Politics of Writing. London: Routledge.
Connor, U. (1996) Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cotterill, J. (2002) Intertextuality in the trials of O.J. Simpson. In J. Cotterill (ed.) Language in the Legal Process 35–53. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coulthard, M. (2002) Whose voice is it? Invented and concealed dialogue in written records of verbal evidence produced by the police. In J. Cotterill (ed.) Language in the Legal Process 19–34. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
David, R. and Brierly, E.C. (1978) Major Legal Systems in the World Today: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Law. New York: Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hartland, N.G. (1994) Goffman’s attitude and social analysis. Human Studies 17: 251–266. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01323604
Jacobson, A.J. (2005) Publishing dissent. Washington & Lee Law Review 62(4): 1607–1636.
Kellogg, T.E. (2009) Constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics? Constitutional development and civil litigation in China. International Journal of Constitutional Law 7(2): 215–246. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icon/mop001
Kirby, M. D. (2007) Judicial dissent – common law and civil law traditions. Law Quarterly Review 123: 379–420.
Liu, K and Wang, H. (2011) 60-year judicial reforms in Taiwan: practices and challenges in judicial independence. Oriental Law 4: 69–77.
Maitland, F.W. (1950) The Constitutional History of England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Markham, J. (2006) Note, against individually signed judicial opinions. Duke Law Journal 56: 923–951.
Peerenboom, R. (2010) Judicial Independence in China. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Poole, T. (2005) Harnessing the power of the past? Lord Hoffmann and the Belmars detainees case. Journal of Law and Society 32(4): 534–561. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2005.00337.x
Tan, S. (1997) Comments on judicial independence. Tribunal of Political Science and Law 1: 27–35.
Tannen, D. (1989) Talking Voices. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Teubert, W. and Krishnamurthy, R. (2007) Corpus Linguistics (Critical Concepts in Linguistics). London: Routledge.
Tiersma, P. (1999) Legal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wells, M. (1994) French and American judicial opinions. Yale Journal of International Law 19: 81–133.
Wong, P.K. (2006) A comparative study of the legal judgments of Hong Kong and the mainland China. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies 2: 35–41.
Wong, P.K. and Sin, K.K. (2003) Linguistic issues in the Chinese court judgments of Hong Kong. In Q.S. Zhou et al. (eds.) New Perspectives in the Study of Language and Law 193–201. Beijing: Law Press.
Xiao, Y. (2003) Courts, judges and judicial reforms. Jurists Review 1: 3–10, 43.
ZoBell, K.M. (1959) Division of opinion in the Supreme Court: a history of judicial disintegration. Cornell L.Q. 44: 186–214.