A Comparative Analysis Of English Complaints And Chinese Complaints: From The Perspective Of Stylistics

Generally speaking, a complaint refers to the initial pleading that starts a civil actionand states the basis for the court’s jurisdiction, the reasons and facts for the plaintiff’sclaim, and the demand for relief. Because of the great differences between Chinese legalsystem and Anglo-American legal system, the complaints in the above two legal systemsare different from each other. Knowing the similarities and differences of these two typesof complaints will help us have a good knowledge of civil procedures in the above twolegal systems. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the complaints of Chinese legal systemand Anglo-American legal system as intensively as possible.This thesis is aimed at applying the theory of stylistics to the study of complaints ofChinese legal system and Anglo-American legal system, and conducting the comparativeanalysis in detail to find out the similarities and dissimilarities between these two types ofcomplaints. The author hopes this study is a help to readers in understanding thecomplaints of the two legal systems.This paper first gives a brief overview of the recent history of the stylistic studies oflegal language and legal texts both abroad and at home, then introduces the main theoriesof stylistics and the basic information on complaints of Chinese legal system andAnglo-American legal system. In the main body of this thesis, English complaints andChinese complaints are compared in the following aspects: graphological features, lexicalfeatures, syntactic features and textual features under the theory of general stylistics. Thegraphological level discusses the use of capitalization of complaints. At the lexical levelthe main focus is the wording of complaints. Under syntax, unusual sentence structuresused in complaints are analyzed in detail. The level of text concentrates on the discoursepatterning and structures. And the final chapter concludes and analyzes the similarities anddifferences of English complaints and Chinese complaints, and then talks about thelimitations and suggestion of this study.