Ideology and the contextualization of ancient Chinese judicial opinions

Legal genres are situation-sensitive and one same genre may take different structural and functional patterns according to the historical context within which it is situated. Judicial opinions of ancient China, for example, look like a totally different genre in contrast with the language of modern...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Discourse & society 2024-11, Vol.35 (6), p.757-773
Main Authors: Han, Zhengrui, Bhatia, Vijay K., Fu, Xue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Argumentation
Attitudes
Chinese history
Chinese languages
Court decisions
Defendants
Frame analysis
Genre
Goffman, Erving (1922-1982)
Grass roots movement
Ideology
Judges & magistrates
Language attitudes
Legal language
Speech
Values
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Legal genres are situation-sensitive and one same genre may take different structural and functional patterns according to the historical context within which it is situated. Judicial opinions of ancient China, for example, look like a totally different genre in contrast with the language of modern Chinese judicial documents. It is not uncommon that county magistrates’ (ancient Chinese judges) writing considerably downplays the task of reasoning and argumentation and becomes fully devoted to the provision of emotional narratives regarding defendants’ wrong-doings and to the meta-communication of imperial ideological values to grassroots. This paper looks into why ideology is a key concern of ancient Chinese judicial writing, what concrete ideological values are actually invoked and how they are interactively disseminated. The analytical framework combines the notion of contextualization (Gumperz, 1982), interactive framing (Tannen, 1993), and footing (Goffman, 1981). Through a nuanced interpretation of the relatedness of imperial ideological values and judicial language structures, the authors attempt to reveal how ancient judicial opinions are built as speech activities of performing identities and activities of presenting ideological stances and beliefs.
ISSN:0957-9265
1460-3624
DOI:10.1177/09579265241241811