A Tentative Comparison Between Chinese And English Statutory Laws

Statutory laws are made mainly to fulfill two missions in our society: one is to regulate human relations and the other is to restore social orders when it breaks down. In that sense, statutory laws present a crossroad where language and legal forces interact. The state imposes its interpretation and appropriation of physical and symbolic power on the public through the language of statutory laws. And various social groups struggle to shift the existing power dynamics. Surely, no other language variation can compete with legislative language on its devotion to do things. In this thesis, the author is interested to look into and compare the linguistic realizations of the production and establishment of such legal forces in English and Chinese statutory laws from the perspective of speech acts.The whole thesis is based on the proposition of the speech act theory. Language is not only used to say things, it is also used to do things. Generally speaking, illocutionary acts, which produce legal facts, are referred to as legal speech acts. According to Debra Cao (2007), there are four broad legal illocutionary forces specifically, i.e. permissions, rights, obligations and prohibitions. Furthermore, those illocutionary acts in the written language of statutory laws are referred to as legislative speech acts. Studies concerning the legislative speech act in Chinese and English statutory laws are most often descriptive and theoretical and fail to go beyond the legislative language level. This empirical study is intended to fill that gap.The data collected to carry out this contrastive study are four Chinese statutory laws and their English counterparts in relation to intellectual property rights protection. Intellectual property rights protection has become a heated issue, which gets the statutory laws thereof a lot of attentions. Therefore, the selection of such statutory laws is of great practical significances. These laws are most heavily influenced by social and economic development. All of the concerning statutory laws have gone through great revisions since the early 1980s. They represent the most updated and advanced level of legislation in china. The selection and description of the detailed realizations of legislative speech acts are constructed on the proposition of Kurzon (1986) that legislative speech acts could be materialized at two levels, namely performative verbs with legal forces and legislative sentences containing modal verbs to appropriate and distribute legal powers. Detailed realizations of such legislative speech acts concerning legal powers at these two levels will be selected and described in English and Chinese statutory laws, and then the occurring frequencies thereof shall be contrasted to elicit similarities and differences among English statutory laws, the original and current versions of Chinese statutory laws. And finally, account should be taken of such differences and similarities from the perspective of cultural traditions and social development.The outcomes of this study confirm that English and Chinese statutory laws do exhibit great similarities and differences regarding the linguistic realizations and occurring frequencies thereof. Both English and Chinese statutory laws adopt a predominance of modal verbs to materialize legislative speech acts. And the distribution percentage of the four broad legal illocutionary forces, namely permissions, rights, obligations and prohibitions, almost coincides. As to the differences, Chinese statutory laws adopt more hearer-oriented and indirect strategies legislative speech acts to produce and establish legal forces, while English statutory laws are more inclined to use speaker-based and direct strategies.It is argued that such similarities could be attributed to the pragmatic characteristics of the legislative discourse itself, which is beyond the social and cultural constraints. Laws are made in a way to facilitate its accomplishment of its missions of regulating human relations and restore such social orders when it breaks down. The differences among the three types of statutory laws are resulted from such factors as cultural traditions and social development. Law is long held in honor in the western society, while Chinese society is heavily influenced by the Confucian tradition. On the other hand, the great social and economic development that China has gone through since the opening up and reform also immensely promoted the advancement of Chinese statutory laws. Drawing on the conclusion of this study, it is suggested that social-cultural factors are supposed to be taken into consideration when studying legislative speech acts. The outcomes of this study shall also give us a brief glimpse of general development of Chinese statutory laws concerning intellectual property protection. This study will surely better our understanding of the interrelationship among language, law and legal forces.Scholarships in this regard concerning Chinese statutory laws are relatively few. The present study is only a pioneering trial. Further studies are badly required to explore into detailed realization and working pattern in Chinese statutory laws and comparative studies between Chinese and English statutory laws to uncover the underlying mechanism of law.