Construction Of Discursive Power And Protection Of Legal Rights: Based On Wu Ying Case

Rampant illegal fund-raising in China has led to huge waste of capital resources and disturbed financial management order recently,which further resulted in social instability and national economic insecurity.As a typical illegal funding case,Wu Ying case has brought lots of attention and controversies.Scholars mainly analyze Wu Ying case from perspectives of law and finance,and studies on involved parties' construction of discursive power and protection of legal rights from the perspective of linguistics are few.Taking Wu Ying case as a specific example and adopting Discourse-cognition-society model,this thesis aims to investigate how involved parties construct discursive power to protect their legal rights and interests.Involved parties specifically refer to Wu Ying's father Wu Yongzheng and Wu Ying's lawyers.The construction of involved parties' discursive power facilitates protection of legal rights,which further benefits judicial justice.By adopting van Dijk's Discourse-cognition-society model,this thesis explores involved parties' construction of discursive power from perspectives of discursive strategies and operational ways respectively,and discusses social representations behind the construction process.The data of this thesis are collected from the Internet,including transcriptions of videos on which involved parties voice and written texts in involved parties'(micro)blogs.Discursive strategies are identified from pragmatic perspective and social representations behind the construction process are explored.The findings are as follows.First,from the perspective of discourses,we find that involved parties' discursive strategies include terms of address,emotion-appealing devices,rhetorical questions,quotation and reformulation.Second,from the perspective of operational ways,the ways the involved parties construct discursive power include increasing exposure and increasing interaction through(micro)blogs,micro-interviews,TV programs etc..Exposure effect generates andattention,sympathy and support from the public are triggered.Third,in terms of social representations behind the construction process,involved parties believe that what Wu Ying had done is private lending;private lending is common practices in Zhejiang province;Wu Ying couldn't be convicted of fraudulent fund-raising crime.This thesis will offer implications on involved parties' construction of discursive power and officers working in police station,court and procuratorate respecting,understanding and helping involved parties to realize discursive power and protect legal rights and interests,which will certainly be beneficial to judicial justice.