Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and American Court Judgments

Abstract

Whether in legal practice or jurisprudence, court judgments or case briefs are one of the most important legal genres for the legal profession. The paper aims to examine contrastively the linguistic characteristics, moves and rhetoric of Chinese and American court judgments, with the aim of specifying the rhetorical preferences that are characteristic of ‘standard’ judgments. Legal cultures are employed to account for the generic and rhetorical differences. This study also has an underlying pedagogical motivation in that the results would be of great value and interest to the Chinese students of Language for Legal Purposes (LLP) and the lawyers practicing foreign legal affairs.