The Linguistic Realization Of Coerciveness In Court Verdicts Of China And Its Social Reality

Court verdicts are the records for the final decisions of court trials,which have major significance for maintaining social stability and protecting citizens' legal interests.The coerciveness,as the essential nature of court verdicts,is the important premise of executing court verdicts.The linguistic analysis of the coerciveness in court verdicts may provide a new perspective to explain the social nature and the regulating functions of court verdicts.Based on Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic-Functional Grammar,this thesis analyzes the linguistic devices regarding coerciveness in court verdicts in China.Its major objective is to explore the linguistic construction of coerciveness in court verdicts and the social reality reflected through the coerciveness,especially the distinctive status of participants involved in different types of court verdicts.Present study adopts a modified version of Shi's(2014)analytical model of court trials which is based on the three-dimensional conception of discourse by Fairclough(1992)with linguistic analysis from the perspective of systemic-functional grammar.The coerciveness of both non-government court verdicts(including civil judgments and criminal judgments)and government court verdicts(administrative judgments)is examined at the text level,and further compared by following a newly-constructed network of coerciveness in court verdicts.In addition,the social reality reflected through the coerciveness of court verdicts is discussed at the social practice level.The similarities and the differences between different kinds of court verdicts are the focus of analysis at the social practice level.This study reveals that coerciveness of court verdicts is built through some linguistic devices,including the special forms of address,the formal rigid expressions,the declarative mood,the cognitive modality clauses and different kinds of processes in transitivity,which constitute the premise for the construction of coerciveness in court verdicts.Specifically,the special form of address points out the senders of coercive desires;the formal rigid expression strengthens the power of the language;the declarative mood guarantees the objective narration of the case process;the cognitive modality clause shows the support or the denial attitude of the court;the different kinds of processes in transitivity also contribute to the coerciveness construction in court verdicts.Moreover,the imperative mood and the obligation model verbs are the direct manifestation of the coerciveness in court verdicts.Overall,the coerciveness of courtverdicts is subject to the citizens' desires,the fact and the evidence,the power of the state organ and the law,and realized through the aid of language.Non-government and government court verdicts have similar linguistic system of coerciveness in court verdicts,whereas,there also exist differences in specific linguistic devices.The most distinguished point is that,in government court verdicts,the administrative organ occupies more space of the statement than any other participants in court verdicts.However,in non-government court verdicts,the statement of the court occupies the largest space.This study also suggests that court verdicts do manifest the nature of justice and fairness of the judicial system in China,which takes the citizens' desires as starting point and is based on the fact,the evidence and the relevant law.However,as the subject of court verdicts,the court usually has the highest status among all participants involved in court verdicts.Moreover,through the comparison between non-government and government court verdicts,it can be found out that administrative organs retain more speech right than the private.The court and the administrative organ are both more powerful than the private in court verdicts.