Abstract
The autonomy of the legal terminology system is a key aspect of China’s legal modernization. The evolution of legal terminology not only reflects linguistic adjustments but also embodies the dynamic interaction between the legal system and societal development. This study adopts a corpus-based approach to explore the construction of an autonomous legal terminology system using texts from China’s criminal procedure legislation. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of legislative texts from different historical periods, the study identifies patterns of terminological variation and the underlying influencing factors. The findings suggest that changes in legal terminology are closely tied to developments within the legal system and are significantly shaped by external factors such as political, cultural, economic, social, and technological changes. This study argues that achieving autonomy in China’s legal terminology system requires balancing the preservation of traditional legal culture with the need for terminological innovation to support the rule of law. Strengthening the autonomy of China’s legal terminology system will contribute to domestic legal reforms and enhance China’s presence in global legal discourse.
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Research funding: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China 2020 Project entitled The Legal Language Changes and Contextualization in the Modernizing Process of Criminal Procedure System in China (Grant No. 20BYY075).
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Legal discourse in transition: technology, methodology, and sociology
- Promoting trust and security in the digital domain: a discourse analysis of legal constructs
- The ‘law of code’: the EU and China’s converging legal discourse on regulating algorithms
- State responsibility in the context of cyberwarfare: dilemma identification and path reconstruction
- Mapping the landscape of cybersecurity research: a bibliometric analysis
- Evolution and regulation of online public opinion on Weibo: a corpus-based topic-sentiment aggregation analysis
- Towards autonomy of China’s legal terminology system: a corpus-based analysis of terminological variation in criminal procedure legislation
- Judicial jigsaw and power dynamics: a cognitive-functional analysis of Chinese courtroom discourse
- Annie refuses to be Annie: the development of women’s rights in the Caribbean from Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John
- Book Review
- Xiaobo Dong, Jie Guo: Chinese Rule of Law Path and Cultivation of Foreign-Related Rule of Law Talents
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Legal discourse in transition: technology, methodology, and sociology
- Promoting trust and security in the digital domain: a discourse analysis of legal constructs
- The ‘law of code’: the EU and China’s converging legal discourse on regulating algorithms
- State responsibility in the context of cyberwarfare: dilemma identification and path reconstruction
- Mapping the landscape of cybersecurity research: a bibliometric analysis
- Evolution and regulation of online public opinion on Weibo: a corpus-based topic-sentiment aggregation analysis
- Towards autonomy of China’s legal terminology system: a corpus-based analysis of terminological variation in criminal procedure legislation
- Judicial jigsaw and power dynamics: a cognitive-functional analysis of Chinese courtroom discourse
- Annie refuses to be Annie: the development of women’s rights in the Caribbean from Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John
- Book Review
- Xiaobo Dong, Jie Guo: Chinese Rule of Law Path and Cultivation of Foreign-Related Rule of Law Talents