| The legal term,as the essence of legal language,is not only the basis of comprehending legal concepts,but also the foundation of grasping legal nexus as well as legal discourse.In recent years,scholars have been devoted to such studies as the definition,classification,structure,rhetoric,meaning and translation of legal terms.However,they either focus on the language itself or just consider the factors outside world,rarely addressing social cognition of legal terms,not mention providing any statistical support.The naming and selection of the legal terms,in line with legal reality,certainly follow some cognitive principles.An overall analysis on production mechanism of legal terms from the cognitive sociolinguistics perspective not only contributes to a much better understanding of profound meaning of legal language and legal culture,but also provides an insight into the multifaceted and polysystematic study of legal terms.Cognitive sociolinguistics explores language in relation to society and cognition.It argues that language is the product of human's experiencing and cognizing the outside world and language in use is inevitably influenced by social environment.Therefore,language study must take social and conceptual aspects of language into consideration.Based on the hypotheses of cognitive sociolinguistics,this thesis,through mutual supplement of the Event-domain Cognitive Model(ECM)and Foucault's Discourse Power Theory(DP),attempts to establish an ED framework so as to provide a tentative explanation for the production mechanism of legal terms and a systematic analysis on semantic and syntactic features of 575 items in New York Penal Code,and further discusses how authorities name and select legal terms,aiming at offering cognitive motivation and social motivation of legal terms as well as enriching the domestic linguistic study of legal terms.This thesis,through classifying and analyzing 575 terms of criminal offenses in New York Penal Code with the assistance of data statistics,proves that the production of legal terms are motivated by both human cognition and social factors.This thesis assumes that legal terms,as an ideological discourse or power discourse,coined by state authorities with the intent of controlling people's thoughts,values,and behavioral orientation,are not only text symbols bearing deterrence,but also the ways of social practice.Via analyzing 575 terms of criminal offenses,45 types of terms of criminal offenses have been summarized on the basis of constitutive elements of criminal offenses under the framework of ED.Almost all naming types with 575 items extracted from the database highlight the element of act,indicating that criminal act is the most kernel element constituting a criminal offense.When it comes to the determination of terms of criminal offenses,it is undoubtedly necessary to refine or summarize criminal acts from criminal offenses,and then highlight other indispensable elements as required.45 types of terms of criminal offenses can be simplified to five types as one-element types,two-element types,three-element types,four-element types and five-element types of terms of criminal offenses,of which the most common naming types are two-element types,three-element types and four-element types respectively making up 36.00%,39.30% and 20.52% of all the items,with total number of 551 items while the least-preferable naming types are those composed of five elements with a ratio of 1.39%,followed by one-element types with a ratio of 2.78%,indicting that it is highly demanding to seize five or more salient elements at the same time because of the limitation of human's cognition abilities.All naming types of terms of criminal offenses are given not more than five elements for the purpose of cognitive effectiveness and economy. |
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