A Comparative Analysis Of Modality System In American And Chinese Criminal Judgment Texts From The Systemic-Functional Grammar Perspective

Openness and fairness of the trial is the basic requirements and inexorable trends of modern rule of law, while the verdict is the vital carrier of the transparent and impartial concept. A criminal judgment, which is an essential part of legal system, includes litigation and trial of a case, facts and evidences, reasoning process, the final decision and so on. As a vital tool employed to carry meanings, modality has profound significance to the study of legal texts. Setting Halliday's systemic-functional grammar as the theoretical framework, this paper aims to probe into the characteristics of modality usage in Chinese and American criminal judgments, and also to conclude similarities and disparities between the two types of texts.This study has set up two corpora, each of which is made up of ten verdicts of corresponding criminal cases (they are three cases of child rape, three of murder, two of drug delivery, two of robbery). The researcher utilizes the systemic-functional grammar as its fundamental framework to analyze the modality system towards Chinese and American criminal judgments from four faucets, that is modality expressions, values, polarity and orientation. Besides, the study employs software as AntConc and Word to recognize and extract targeted words and phrases among English and Chinese texts respectively. Software Word are utilized to sort these data, supplemented by qualitative analysis. Consequently, a series of findings is attained as follows:1) With regard to modality expressions, criminal judgments of America possess rather more modality expressions than those of China, but in both two corpora modal operators and mood adjuncts take up the biggest share. The two varieties of modality expressions dominate when expressing modal meanings in Chinese and American criminal judgments.2) With regard to modality values, American criminal verdicts are prone to put modal expressions of medium and low value into use, while Chinese criminal verdicts are prone to those of high and low value. Such employment and distribution demonstrate the differences in the usage of modality values in Chinese and American criminal judgments.3) With regard to modality polarity, the two corpora share the uniformity in the application of modality polarity, and are apt to apply the positive one, while with a small proportion of the negative.4) With regard to modality orientation, both are more inclined to the usage of implicit subjective orientation that shows the similarities in the usage of modality orientation in Chinese and American criminal judgments.This paper is conducive to a deeper understanding of similarities and differences of Chinese and American texts. The study has instructive sense to the maturity of Chinese legal system, and can offer enlightenment to linguists and translators at the same time.