Chinese Face Culture&Legal Language:A Game-Complementation Paradigm

The dissertation endeavors to put the face culture into the context of law and probes into people's legal psychology by investigating and studying legal language.To be specific,taking the face culture as the entry of the research,targeting the language of mediation and the language of trial as the research objective,employing Goffman's face theory and Brown and Levinson's pragmatic face strategies as the theoretical references,the author first constructs the "Game-Complementation" paradigm and investigates and discusses the interrelations among the face culture with Chinese characteristics,legal psychology and legal language.Based on the author's speculations on the summary of theories,the author studies legal language which is under the influence of the Chinese face view and legal psychology by way of analyzing actual mediation and litigation cases.In this study,"investigation-analysis method","the case method" and"comparative analysis" are applied to analyze some hot cases or topics in the contemporary society,such as Kuai Bo case and some typical intellectual property cases.The research finds that face culture has a subtle or unconscious influence on our country's judicial practice.Face can be considered as the linguistic projection of the Chinese traditional legal psychology.The face culture can influence legal language by abundant connotations of legal psychology.It is always reflected by language as the external changes of emotions and behavioral patterns.The author of the thesis contends that the application of "Game-Complementation"paradigm of the face culture and legal language can interpret the interrelations among the face culture,legal psychology,and legal language.The paradigm can reveal the subtle mutual differences and internal differences between the language of mediation and the language of trial.Furthermore,it can also illustrate the diversification of the abundant connotations and genre variations of legal language.The analysis in this research also demonstrates how mediators and judges in the judicial practice use various language strategies as the means of complementation to reach the balance of interests and expectations of the parties in disputes.The author finds that in the mediation activities,mediators and mediation participants are in a "game" state.Through dialogue and coordination,mediators can understand the needs and expectations of the interests of all parties.The use of certain language strategies and other complementary means can assist to achieve the purpose of communication,Complementation includes introducing some pragmatic strategies,social norms,ethics and folk customs.The author also finds that during the trial,judges also need to learn the expectations of litigants through dialogue and communication.Within the framework of the existing laws and regulations,judges must employ the necessary pragmatic strategies of trial language to complete the adjudication of cases.Under such circumstances,the legal language,language strategies and complementary pragmatic strategies used by the judges apparently have some obvious institutional characteristics,which guarantee the continuity of court trials and maintain the court's institutional image.The Chinese face culture revealed in the personal,collective and national dimensions and projected by the judicial language can have both positive and negative impacts on judicial practice.Therefore,we should confront its objective existence and eliminate the negative influences of the culture.By doing this,it will help to improve the application,skills and standardization of the legal language use.It will to promote the mechanism of the plural resolutions to disputes and eliminate the over-reliance on the rigid and single mode of present judicial litigation settlement,which matches the government's judicial reform policies of changing to the non-litigation as the main way to resolve the disputes.It will also help to improve the reasonable expression of the legal language of mediation and trial,so that the excellent characteristics of the Chinese face culture can be combined with mediation and litigation.Finally,it will help to establish a scientific mechanism for the language power distribution and guarantee the right of speech of all parties involved in litigation.