Abstract
On-site law enforcement is routine work for Chinese traffic police to effectively control a congested city. Misunderstanding, confusion, and even conflict frequently occur between traffic police and offenders about traffic offence penalties. Based on an analysis of digital recordings, the present study investigates institutional interaction from a semiotic perspective. The institutional discourse, taken as a sign, creates an interpretant in the language of traffic police, which works as representamen to be interpreted by offenders. By examining the meaning construction in the interaction, the study reveals the way police impose penalties exploiting the impact of their linguistic, professional and social background. The findings indicate that the resistance or obedience to penalties is a reflection of the interpretant produced by the offenders in the process of mediation. As China has recently made great progress in the creation of rules of law, police organizations have established many new clauses, covering every aspect of police routine. However, the clauses relating to the use of legal language for police officers encountering offenders can, to some degree, result in different interpretations of the obscure language and conventional procedures, which can thus impede effective communication between two participants. Apart from the rigid limitation on and strict observance of legal language choices, the imbalanced distribution of legal knowledge between professionals and laymen, the complexity of identity construction and historical and social cultures may impose constraints on the institutional discourse. This study suggests that the police should be aware of institutional discourse as a semiotic process and should modify their linguistic strategy to effect positive interaction.
Funding statement: This study is supported in part by the scholarship from China Scholarship Council (CSC) under the Grant CSC No. 2011833280.
Key to transcription
- P
Traffic Policeman
- O
Road Traffic Offender
- =
latching
- ↑
high rise intonation
- [ ]
overlapping talk
- (( ))
transcriber’s descriptions
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
- The frowning balance: Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
- Semiotics of visual evidence in law
- Observing laws through “understanding eyes”
- Interpreting law in socio-pragmatic space
- Conceptualizing cultural discrepancies in legal translation: A case-based study
- The first integrated practice of legal translation in modern China: A study of the Chinese translation of Elements of International Law, 1864
- Translations of early Sino-British treaties and the masked western legal concepts
- “Susanna and the Elders”: On the visual semiotic of shame
- Angels, warriors, and beacons: Totemic law, territorial coding, and monumental sculpture in post-industrial landscapes
- Expiration dates: Performative illusions of law and regulation
- From immunity to immunity. From immunity to silence: The case of Gilad Sharon
- Under western eyes: Articulation between indigenous justice and the national judicial system
- Police interpreting: The facts sheet
- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
- Weighing and balancing of principles in cases with rule paradoxes
- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
- Institutional interaction in traffic law enforcement in China: Resistance and obedience
- Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt: Determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts
- Les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law
- “Verbal and nonverbal” in semiotics
- The frowning balance: Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
- Semiotics of visual evidence in law
- Observing laws through “understanding eyes”
- Interpreting law in socio-pragmatic space
- Conceptualizing cultural discrepancies in legal translation: A case-based study
- The first integrated practice of legal translation in modern China: A study of the Chinese translation of Elements of International Law, 1864
- Translations of early Sino-British treaties and the masked western legal concepts
- “Susanna and the Elders”: On the visual semiotic of shame
- Angels, warriors, and beacons: Totemic law, territorial coding, and monumental sculpture in post-industrial landscapes
- Expiration dates: Performative illusions of law and regulation
- From immunity to immunity. From immunity to silence: The case of Gilad Sharon
- Under western eyes: Articulation between indigenous justice and the national judicial system
- Police interpreting: The facts sheet
- The influence of legal tradition on Italian arbitration discourse
- Weighing and balancing of principles in cases with rule paradoxes
- “You have to teach the judge what to do”: Semiotic gaps between unrepresented litigants and the common law
- The semiotic interpretation of legal subjects in China’s new criminal procedure law
- Mission impossible? Judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator in Chinese court conciliation
- “Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials
- Institutional interaction in traffic law enforcement in China: Resistance and obedience
- Duppying yoots in a dog eat dog world, kmt: Determining the senses of slang terms for the Courts
- Les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois