Acontrastiveanalysis Of Chinese &american Court Judgments-from The Perspective Of Discourse Semantics

The contrastive analysis on the nature of legal discourse from different cultures not only makes for the cross-culture research, but also benefits the cross-culture legal communication. However, contrastive analysis in China has been mainly focused on the general rules concerning differences and similarities between Chinese and English while less contrastive analysis is concentrated on legal discourse of these two languages. And even fewer scholars have ever conducted contrastive analysis on court judgment—one type of legal discourse, from the perspective of discourse semantics. As is well known, judgment is a kind of practical writings in legal profession, which is produced by the court in accordance with court decisions or verdicts. Based on the discourse semantic theory, from the perspective of cross-culture contrastive analysis, this research intends to conduct a systematic contrastive analysis and discussion on Chinese and American judgments, with the aim of finding the similarities and differences between Chinese and American judgments so as to explore the factors governing the configuration of information and its linguistic representations of judgments.Discourse semantics, proposed by Martin and Rose (2003), consists of five systems: Appraisal, Ideation, Conjunction, Identification and Periodicity. The Appraisal system is concerned with evaluation—the kinds of attitudes negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned. The Ideation system focuses on the content of a discourse—what kinds of activities are undertaken, and how participants in these activities are described, classified and what they are composed of. Conjunction looks at inter-connections between processes: adding, comparing, sequencing and explaining them. Identification is concerned with tracking participants—with introducing people and things into a discourse and keeping track of them once there. Periodicity is concerned with information flow—with the way in which meanings are packaged to make it easier for us to take them in. These are the semantic resources that realize the ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning at the discourse level.Five Chinese samples and nine American samples of court judgment are chosen at random to serve as the data of the present study. Both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are employed in this research. Furthermore, since the discourse semantic theory is not only concerned with the meaning of words but also concerned with the macro level—discourse, the present research employs both a holistic top-down perspective and detailed bottom-up observations.Through analysis and discussion, it is found that both Chinese and American judgments, whatever their sub-varieties, are in nature valid and effectual formal document, characterized by justice, fairness and logic. Both of them tend to employ full and appropriate discourse semantic resources to realize the essential functions and goal. The Appraisal analysis makes it clear that all the Courts and judges try to keep the judgments objective and rational and avoid exposing personal emotions and feelings so as to achieve justice. The participants must be clearly tracked to keep definite reference and avoid ambiguity and vagueness. It has been proved that various conjunctions are employed to make judgments cohesive and coherent. All information can become well-packaged for easier understanding as long as following the periodic structure. After all, judgments must be logical and compact and mirror the spirit of justice and fairness. Thus when drafting and translating a judgment, all these should be taken into consideration However, there are also many differences between Chinese and American judgments. For example, Chinese judgments always employ heterogloss by projecting the voices of people related with a case while American judgments (except summary judgments) employ heterogloss not only by projecting the voices of people but also by projecting different precedents to indicate a certain opinion; The facts and evidences in Chinese judgments are mainly realized by the interweaving of the process of doing and being while those in American judgments are mainly realized by the process of doing; Chinese is more likely to omit conjunctions while American is full of conjunctions to sequence its expression; As far as Identification system is concerned, people who are closely related with the case are introduced in Chinese judgments just after the title, which is not adopted by the American judgments; As to the periodic system, Chinese judgments are organized in an Introduction-Analysis-Conclusion pattern while American judgments are organized in a General-Arguments pattern. Though the above-mentioned is only a part of the complex relation between Chinese and American judgments, it is a facet that can mirror the whole. In addition, within the relatively stable given generic system and register, and with basically similar discourse functions, the determining factors that cause the similarities and differences between Chinese and American judgments are socio-cultural systems, linguistic conventions, legal systems as well as the stance or attitude of the discourse users. These"four categories"can contribute to bridging the gap of legal communication and exchanges between different languages.The contrastive analysis and discussion on court judgments in this study can provide some implications for the legal practice of judgment comprehending and drafting. As this study is by nature a contrastive analysis, the findings and conclusions will also shed certain significant light on the practice of judgment translation, particularly with regard to the assessment of legal translation quality.