Linguistic Strategy For Judges In Criminal Courts: A CDA Model

The practical motive for the composition of this paper is to address the linguistic problems concerning the judicial discourse produced in criminal trials. By a critical adoption of Fairclough's critical discourse analysis theory and Saussure's linguistics theory, this paper aims to develop an analytic model for a relatively objective and comprehensive description of the factors affecting the information fidelity of judicial discourses produced in Chinese criminal trials, with the practical interest of outlining strategies for the judges for ensuring judicial justice on the linguistic dimension.The paper adopts Fairclough's correct emphasis on the importance of studying the concrete conditions of discourse production, but criticizes Fairclough's misconception of discourse and the critical methodology, which in my opinion is an overcritical departure from the Saussurean principles. The paper maintains the Saussurean distinction between langue and parole, and defines discourse as a text produced in actual situations, which is equivalent to the Saussurean parole.The relation between language and power and the role of power hierarchy in the production of discourse are two major issues in the mainstream critical discourse analysis theory. In this paper, the distinction between discourse and the production of discourse is introduced, for discourse per se should not be confused with the production of discourse. Another important distinction is that between the production of idea and the production of discourse. It is argued by the author that the social power hierarchy directly determines the production of social ideas, which is governed by necessary physical and social laws, rather than the production of discourse, which is governed by the biological linguistic faculty of the human species, together with the relatively much more arbitrary grammatical rules of each individual language.