Tree Information Structure Analysis Of Chinese Criminal Judicial Verdicts

As the carrier of judicial justice, verdicts indicate judicial civilization. Onlineverdicts have been arousing great attention and furious discussion since2009. As aformal legal document, Chinese criminal judicial verdicts present distinct treeinformation structure, which becomes an important research theme about arrangementof expressions in legal discourses in law and linguistics. This paper explores treeinformation structure of Chinese criminal judicial verdicts based on first-trial criminaljudicial verdicts in Henan Province as research objects. Domestic research on verdictshas been done under the guidance of other theories, but study and application of treeinformation structure of legal discourse have not been given due attention.Under the guidance of tree information structure of legal discourse (Du Jinbang,2007:43), this thesis attempts to analyze tree information structure in Chinese first-trialcriminal judicial verdicts by making the best of methods of information knot marker,information classification marker, and information source marker, to carry out researchanalysis supplemented by statistical analysis. Firstly, the thesis focuses on necessity ofthe research and relevant information. And it reviews precious researches abroad and athome, generalizes application of tree information structure of legal discourse in forensiclinguistics, and analyzes the research problems concerning in China. Then this thesisbriefly introduces the theoretical foundation. In addition, the thesis explores treeinformation structures of Chinese criminal judicial verdicts with Chinese criminaljudicial verdicts from different cities in Henan Province as examples. Finally, this thesiscomes to a summary, which concludes main findings and summarizes the features oftree information structure of Chinese criminal judicial verdicts in Henan Province, theresearch process, limitations of the research, and speculation about further researches.The research shows that tree information structure of legal discourse is feasible tobe used to analyze Chinese criminal judicial verdicts to reveal some key features. It ishoped that the features are useful to help readers to understand Chinese criminal judicialverdicts from the linguistic aspect. It is hoped that this research can arouse scholars’ interest in research and application of the tree information structure in legal discourses.