A Comparative Study On Modal Verbs In Chinese And American Civil Judgments From The Perspective Of Functional Grammar

With the advancement of judicial reform in China,the fairness and openness of trials have received more and more attention.The judgment is an important carrier of transparency and justice in trials.As a direct reflection of the case trial,the wording of the judgment should be particularly precise.Modality is often used in judgments,which may convey different moods.Based on the theoretical framework of Halliday's functional grammar,a comparative study of the frequencies,the values and the polarity of modal verbs in the selected materials is conducted in this thesis,relying on the classifications of English and Chinese modal verbs by Halliday and Ma Qingzhu respectively.Randomly selected from the legal websites: “Peking Law” and “Lexis Advance”,five categories of civil cases from appellate courts: contract disputes,property rights disputes,labor disputes,securities disputes and tort damages,are selected as research materials,which consist of twenty-five Chinese and American cases respectively.In addition,this study uses tools: AntConc,Microsoft Word,and Excel to conduct the statistical analysis.Through comparative analysis,it is found that:(1)The quantity of different kinds of modal verbs in the selected American and Chinese civil judgments are almost same,as well as the different kinds of positive modal verbs and negative expressions;while,the frequency of each modal verb is different.(2)On average,the total number of modal verbs used in each collected American materials is three times larger than that of Chinese data;(3)American and Chinese civil judgments all use modal verbs of high,median,and low values.Comparing the frequency of each value,it can be concluded: a.in the American data,median-value modal verbs are the most popular,followed by the low-value words and then the high-value expressions.In the Chinese set of data,high-value modal verbs are widely used,followed by the low-value and the median-value words;b.the frequency of each modal verb of the same value is different;(4)The selected American and Chinese civil judgments are consistent in the polarity and the positive forms of modal verbs are overwhelmingly more than the negative forms.All those similarities and differences can attribute to language conventions,the different legal systems in two countries,and the different social culture.The study is significant for improving the use of modal words in Chinese civil judgments,which can contribute to legal document writing and the word study of legal discourses.