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Pragmatics and Society: Online-First Articles

Negotiating the value of rule of law through attitudinal positioning

A corpus-based analysis of Chinese digital indictments

ORCID logo | Fujian Normal University

This article examines how the value of rule of law is negotiated through public prosecutors’ attitudinal positioning of themselves and defendants in courtroom discourse. A corpus-based analysis of 120 recent Chinese digital indictments revealed that the evaluative stances of public prosecutors toward themselves invariably imply positive judgment of capacity and legal propriety in their legal investigation, thus constructing a stable and authoritative image of law enforcers. Their attitudes toward defendants are mainly negative judgments of both moral and legal propriety through various criminal actions, creating a predominantly evil image of law violators with different personae. It is through these sharply different patterns of discourse representation that public prosecutors tactically construct and negotiate attitudes toward crime and justice, thus establishing mainstream judicial values during legal proceedings. This study may shed new light on the research of legal argumentation for negotiating judicial values under the civil law system in this digital era.

Keywords: attitudinal positioning, discourse analysis, legal argumentation, Chinese digital indictments, prosecution, civil law system
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Studies of value negotiation in courtroom discourse
  • 3.The corpus-based analysis of evaluative instances within Chinese indictments
    • 3.1Analytical foundation
    • 3.2Application of corpus techniques and data analysis
      • 3.2.1Research questions
      • 3.2.2Data collection
      • 3.2.3Data analysis procedure
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Judgment on defendants
    • 4.2Judgment on public prosecutors
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 22 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.23026.shi
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