Legal Discourse Critical Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis was initiated in the 1970s, which aims at revealing the potential relationship between language, power and ideology. In their opinions, no discourse is absolutely objective, but more or less affected by ideology or other social factors. Based on that, the paper employs Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model and Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar to analyze the Chinese legal discourses and uncover the hidden ideology behind the legal discourses.The whole analysis is developed from microcosmic and macrocosmic aspects. Firstly, the author follows Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar to give a detailed description of classification, conversion, modality and transitivity in the discourses, and analyze how power and ideology are permeated in them. Then, under the guidance of Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model, the author tries to integrate the social and historical conditions to explain the interrelationship between the legal discourses and social structures. To be specific, it is to be found out how the legal discourses are determined by the social structures and what reproductive effects the legal discourses can cumulatively have on the social structures.The conclusion of this paper is that legal discourses, as the means to regulate the social relations and maintain the social operation, must reflect some power and ideology, which is unavoidable. So it requires the legislators and other legal experts to consider not only the law's authoritativeness and enforceability, but also the endurablility of the ruled, when they formulate and apply the law.