Abstract
Court conciliation conducted by judges in Chinese courts is often seen in a positive light as resolving civil disputes efficiently. However, it is sometimes also severely criticized for judges’ malpractice in pressing parties to settle by revealing adjudication results. Sadly, except for mere criticism against this kind of phenomenon and abstract provisions on forbidding this kind of malpractice, little has been done to provide a detailed description of what it is and how to avoid it. This paper, based on authentic conciliation data and an interview with two judges, intends to conduct a linguistic analysis of the above problem. This paper argues that, while in theory legal discourse should be explicit, judges in court conciliation need to bury their attitudes in words when it comes to the rendering of attitudes and suggestions. This paper first analyzes the dilemma concerning how much pressure to be imposed upon which party, and then analyzes linguistic features of judges’ coercive and persuasive conciliation styles, and finally offers suggestions as to the linguistic shift of conciliation style from coercion to persuasion. This paper concludes that such malpractice as coercing parties to settle may be linguistically avoided when judges learn to bury their attitudes in words and leave parties to make voluntary choices.
Acknowledgements
This paper is a part of the Philosophy and Social Science Research Program (GD14YWW03, GD11XWW09). I’m deeply indebted to Prof. Janet Ainsworth for her valuable advice on the analysis of undue pressure and her encouragement in the writing of this paper. My sincere thanks also go to Judge Zhang and Judge Cao for their kind help during data collection.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Hidden meanings in legal discourse
- Comparing the incomparable and legal discourse
- Two assumptions in legal discourse: To answer for self and to tell the truth
- Le sens caché: Refoulement et impensé dans le discours de la loi sémiotique des significations cachées du discours juridique
- Multiple historical and social layers of interpretation of marital rape in England
- Revisiting judgment translation in Hong Kong
- Exemption and exegesis: Judicial interpretation of exemption clauses in England, Australia, and India
- Identifying the meanings hidden in legal texts: The three conditions of relevance theory and their sufficiency
- The consequences and effects of language transformations in legal discourse
- Exploring identities in police interrogations
- Rights, responsibilities, and resistance: Legal discourse and intervention legislation in the Northern Territory in Australia
- An exploration of the semantic domain of legal language
- The hidden meanings in the case law of the European Court for Human Rights
- Crimes of the sign: Politics and performatives in the Treason Trials of 1794
- Showing what “marriage” is: Law’s civilizing sign
- A sociosemiotic approach to the legal dispute over the crime of whoring with an underage girl in China
- Uncovering hidden meanings in legal discourse on the elderly: A semioethical perspective
- Deontic meaning making in legislative discourse
- Hidden meanings of the words “religion” and “religious” in legal discourse
- Hidden cultures in law: Metaphor and translation in legal discourse
- Negotiating language status in multilingual jurisdictions: Rhetoric and reality
- Burying attitudes in words: Linguistic realization of the shift of judges’ court conciliation style
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Hidden meanings in legal discourse
- Comparing the incomparable and legal discourse
- Two assumptions in legal discourse: To answer for self and to tell the truth
- Le sens caché: Refoulement et impensé dans le discours de la loi sémiotique des significations cachées du discours juridique
- Multiple historical and social layers of interpretation of marital rape in England
- Revisiting judgment translation in Hong Kong
- Exemption and exegesis: Judicial interpretation of exemption clauses in England, Australia, and India
- Identifying the meanings hidden in legal texts: The three conditions of relevance theory and their sufficiency
- The consequences and effects of language transformations in legal discourse
- Exploring identities in police interrogations
- Rights, responsibilities, and resistance: Legal discourse and intervention legislation in the Northern Territory in Australia
- An exploration of the semantic domain of legal language
- The hidden meanings in the case law of the European Court for Human Rights
- Crimes of the sign: Politics and performatives in the Treason Trials of 1794
- Showing what “marriage” is: Law’s civilizing sign
- A sociosemiotic approach to the legal dispute over the crime of whoring with an underage girl in China
- Uncovering hidden meanings in legal discourse on the elderly: A semioethical perspective
- Deontic meaning making in legislative discourse
- Hidden meanings of the words “religion” and “religious” in legal discourse
- Hidden cultures in law: Metaphor and translation in legal discourse
- Negotiating language status in multilingual jurisdictions: Rhetoric and reality
- Burying attitudes in words: Linguistic realization of the shift of judges’ court conciliation style