A Contrastive Study Of Heteroglossia In The Reasoning Of Criminal Judgments Of Chinese Mainland And Hong Kong

Within the framework of the Engagement of Appraisal System,this thesis investigates the heteroglossia in the reasoning of criminal judgments of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and examines their similarities and differences in the employment of heteroglossic engagement resources and corresponding reasons.Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are adopted to carry out this study.The reasoning of 20 criminal judgments produced upon second instance for the same cause of action（half from Chinese mainland and the other from Hong Kong）are collected and built as two separate corpora,totaling 5024 characters and 4774 words respectively.With the help of UAM Corpus Tool 3.3,the number and ratio of each subtype of heteroglossic engagement employed in the reasoning are calculated and displayed.While the qualitative method is employed to interpret how judges of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong manipulate these resources to achieve specific purposes such as locating stance and negotiating with other voices,identify the similarities and difference in their selections of the heteroglossic engagement resources and discuss the corresponding reasons.It is found that a variety of heteroglossic engagement resources are employed in the reasoning of criminal judgment of both Chinese mainland and Hong Kong to achieve specific effects.Furthermore,judges of the mainland and Hong Kong share some similarities in the selection of subtypes of heteroglossic engagement resources:both of them prefer Disclaim to Proclaim within Contract-Type,Deny to Counter within Disclaim-Type and Acknowledge to Distance within Attribute-Type,which is attributed to the fact that they hold similar communicative purposes in the reasoning of judicial judgments.In respect of the differences,on the whole,judges of the mainland tend to use Dialogic Contraction strategy while their Hong Kong counterparts do the opposite;the mainland judges are inclined to employ Pronounce rather than Endorse,while the Hong Kong counterparts prefer the latter.The differences in question can be interpreted from the different legal doctrines in themainland and Hong Kong and the textual structure of the reasoning of criminal judgments.It is hoped that the research findings will provide implications for the reasoning of judicial judgments of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong,promote their communication in the field of law as well as linguistics and extend the application of appraisal theory.