Authoritativeness Of Chinese Legislative Discourse: A Systemic-Functional Linguistic Perspective

Law is formulated, interpreted and enforced in all societies. And all these different legalprocesses are realized primarily through language. Therefore, it is not only the law but also thelanguage of the law that permeates our lives. Discourses of law, spoken or written, have become afocus in linguistics studies. Power is omnipresent in language use. It is normally expressed and reproduced throughlanguage. Legal language, being a distinctive variety of language, manifests legal power at thelinguistic level. The legal power manifests itself as the power of the state in legislation and lawamendment. It actually refers to the authoritativeness of the law that is implied in the legal discourse.The authoritativeness of law is an inherent feature of all kinds of legal discourse. The present study, through analysis of Constitution of the People's Republic of China, attemptsto explore the authoritativeness of the Chinese legislative discourse from a systemic functionalperspective in the hope of enhancing people's legal language awareness as well as helping improvethe effectiveness of the Chinese legislative expression. This thesis consists of five chapters: Chapter One is an introduction. It begins with a brief introduction of the status quoof Forensic Linguistics, and then talks about the rationale of the study, the objective, themethodology and the data for analysis. In this chapter, some research questions abouthow the supreme authoritativeness of Constitution of the People's Republic of China isproduced and is represented through linguistic devices are raised. The following chapterscenter on these two questions. In Chapter Two, literature related to the present study is comprehensively reviewed.First, the relationship of power and discourse is clarified, by which we see that legalpower manifests itself as the authority of law in the legal discourse. Second, the study oflegislative discourses both at home and abroad is reviewed, through which we know thatit is necessary to do the present research. Lastly, a preliminary exploration of therelationship between language and context is presented so as to make preparations forthe construction of the analytical framework in Chapter Three. Chapter Three is mainly devoted to constructing an analytical framework on the basis of thesystemic functional approach. With the systemic functional approach, we construct a stratifiedanalytical framework that is concerned with the analysis of context of culture and context ofsituation. Description of the impact of context of culture is realized through genre analysis, whichexplores Constitution of the People's Republic of China on the macro level. Description of theimpact of context of situation is realized through register analysis, which explores the Constitutionof our country on the micro level. In the analytical framework, both genre and register are realizedthrough language, and genre is a higher semiotic plane in context than register. Register is controlledby genre. So the analytical framework is evaluative as well as interpretive. Chapter Four is the analysis of Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Before theanalysis, an elaboration of its nature in legal sense is presented in order to pave a way for thelinguistic study. Then, a detailed description of the generic structure of Constitution of the People'sRepublic of China is conducted, in which that the general purpose of the discourse of theConstitution can be defined as the establishment of a basic law of the state to maintain socialstability of our country on the principle of rule of law is first described, and the communicativefunction as well as their linguistic strategy of each stage are thoroughly interpreted. On the basis ofthis description, we outline a schematic structure of Constitution of People's Republic of Chinathrough which we understand how its overall purpose is achieved step by step. In addition, thelinguistic realization differs across genres as well as schematic stages, which manifests that it isthrough language that genres get realized.