On Features of Legal Terms Applied in the Criminal Case News: Based on Xinran Ji Reports

Abstract

The legal terms stand as an essential part of legal language representing specialized concepts in laws, acts and regulations, whose distinguishing features remains, even with the applications in other non-legal instruments, and keep affecting the writing style of legal instruments, explicitly, the case news. Criminal cases are the main staples reported in case news, because people’s preferences, social controversies and public policies are able to be indicated in criminal cases. Furthermore, criminal cases can also inspect senses of social justice and morality in a more profound perspective, therefore the criminal case news is more valuable than the civil case news. But relatively speaking there are numerous legal terms being involved in criminal news reports, which requires reporters or editors should posses the corresponding attainment of legal knowledge, master the features of legal language and precisely understand the relation between the legal terms and the news story so that the news events could be represented in the presence of readers objectively and veritably, at the same time the communication effects made by news media could be actually exerted. This paper selects news reports of the case of Chinese graduate Xinran Ji studying in America murdered from media as research texts, which combine with features of the legal terms and criminal case news to add up and analyze the legal terms utilized in news reports on the case. In the end, it is hoped that the summary on features of the legal term applied in criminal case news would be drew out to contribute some inspirations and reflections.