The Comparative Study Of Legal English And Legal Chinese Variation

Language has been changing all the time. Researching language variation is thebest entry point of language study, because the diachronically evolution of languagecan always be found in the synchronically variation of language. Although there arestill some divergences in sociolinguistic task, aim and nature, no matter what opinionis started from, language variation is the core of sociolinguistics.(Chen Songcen,1999:79). The research of language variation started from the1960s, and nowadaysthe research on language variation has been in a mature stage in western countries.However, compared with western countries, in China the research on languagevariation is a little behind, and there is much space to improve. On the one hand, dueto the insufficient introduction to language variation, the Chinese sociolinguists havenot realized the importance of the study of language variation, on the other hand, themiscomprehension of the theories of language variation result in the insufficiency ofresearch findings and innovations.(Xu Daming&Cai Bing,2006:2)The forensic linguistics which rose gradually in recent years has also drawn a lotof attention. The rapid development of legal language is benefit from the developmentof sociolinguistics, and the research of legal language can’t work without the socialcontext. This paper combines legal linguistics with social linguistics and proposes anew research angle: to compare legal English and legal Chinese under the theoreticalframe of sociolinguistics.This paper contains altogether five chapters: Chapter1is a general introductionto comparative study of legal English and legal Chinese variation; Chapter2is aboutthe theoretical frame work of this thesis: Saussurean Paradox, Lobov’s OrderlyHeterogeneous Theory and Barley and Bickerton’s Dynamic Model; Chapter3useslegal English and legal Chinese as study objectives, explores the variation of sound,style, grammar and vocabulary. This chapter also explores the reason for variationfrom the angles of territory, legal system, spatio-time; Chapter4compares legalEnglish variation with legal Chinese variation, which shows that there are some similarities as well as some differences, and this thesis also gives the reasons. The lastchapter, Chapter5is a concluding chapter that stressed the significance and thedisadvantages of this paper. At the same time, the last chapter also proved thefollowing hypothesis:(a) There is close relationship between language and law; andthey depend on each other;(b) Phonological variation, stylistic variation, grammaticalvariation and lexical variation have happened in legal English and legal Chinese;(c)The reasons for these variations includes territorial difference, different legal system,spatio-temporal difference;(d)There are similarities between legal English variationand legal Chinese variation, at the same time, there are also some differences. Thereasons are closely related to the value orientation of legal event, attribute of legallanguage, social environment, language history and legal system.