Abstract
Abstract This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports which is divided into two narrative types, the objective and the semi-dialogic. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts in the two types, it finds that the differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.
Highlights
As core concept in linguistic research, referentiality which stems from ancient Greece has been the important study object and has been studied from different perspective, ranging from logic and philosophy, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis (Chen 2015: 1-5)
Another type of legal news reports is called the semi-dialogic narrative type of legal news reports, which adopts the method of narrating and discussing to appropriately integrate the accounts of cases, psychological descriptions of the persons involved in cases, remarks made by the persons involved in cases and comments from other persons concerned
In these four Chinese legal news reports, we find that the use of personal pronouns in Chinese legal news reports is basically consistent with that in English legal news reports, that is, the number of personal pronouns in the first type of reports (Reports 7 and 9) is slightly lower than that in the second type of reports (Reports 8 and 10), and the use frequency of the third person is higher than that in the first and second types of reports except Report 8
Summary
As core concept in linguistic research, referentiality which stems from ancient Greece has been the important study object and has been studied from different perspective, ranging from logic and philosophy, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis (Chen 2015: 1-5). The basic spirit of objectivity and justice of the law can be embodied to the greatest extent in legal news reports Another type of legal news reports is called the semi-dialogic narrative type of legal news reports, which adopts the method of narrating and discussing to appropriately integrate the accounts of cases, psychological descriptions of the persons involved in cases, remarks made by the persons involved in cases and comments from other persons concerned. When using personal pronouns for anaphora, the conventional context conditions are sufficient to establish the semantic association between personal pronouns and proper nouns, and establish the unit of reference according to the needs of the context From this perspective, we can say the use of personal pronouns in legal news reports is like that in general discourse. The comparison of distribution and rhetoric function of personal pronouns in Chinese and English legal news will distinguish the linguistic and logical differences between the two legal systems and provide guidance for bilingual practitioners
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