A Critical Discourse Study Of Personal Information Laws In The European Union And The United States

In the era of data and information,personal information security has aroused widespread concern,and the personal information law of the People’s Republic of China is in draft.In this background,the thesis takes the European Union’s and the United States’ personal information laws as the research objects and adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse analysis as the theoretical framework to analyze and compare the discourse characteristics of personal information laws in the two jurisdictions.Based on textual features and discursive features,the thesis further explores the social and cultural factors and interprets these features from the perspectives of history,culture,and identity.By so doing,the thesis hopes to give humble suggestions for Chinese personal information law.This research combines both quantitative and qualitative research methods.For quantitative analysis,grounded on previous studies about personal information law,the thesis collects the texts of personal information laws of the European Union and the United States and builds two corpora separately.With the aid of two corpus analysis instruments,Wmatrix 4 and Antconc 3.5.7,the frequency and collocation of personal information law in the European Union and the United States are investigated and compared at the textual level.In terms of qualitative analysis,based on the textual features of personal information laws in the two jurisdictions,the thesis conducts a discursive analysis of the intertextuality in definitions.For social practice analysis,the thesis explores the social and cultural factors behind the differences presented in textual and discursive levels and further analyzes the ideology and value underlying the legal discourse.From the textual analysis,the high-frequency vocabularies and collocations show that the European Union emphasizes on the protection of personal information at the individual level,and the specific data processing steps are clearly stated by various words and collocations.The United States attaches importance to the use and value of personal information and pays attention to the information systems for specific areas and information protection at the national level.In the intertextual analysis of “personal data/information” definitions in the dimension of discourse practice,both the European Union and the United States follow the earlier version,which embodies the authority and unity,relative closure and predictability of legal discourse in resorting intertextual resources.At the same time,the connotation of personal information is enriched with the development of science and technology of the times.The difference lies in that the personal information law of the European Union focuses on providing comprehensive,detailed and strict protections for data subjects,while the United States’ personal information law attaches more importance to privacy and is much more driven by industry needs.Through further analysis of the two jurisdictions’ historical background,it can be noted that the European Union’s personal information law evolves out of the protection of human rights,and the United States’ personal information law follows the principle of common law.In the international arena,the two jurisdictions’ different attentions may indicate their corresponding political considerations,such as strengthening the dominance of personal information legal discourse,setting up datarelated international standards,and maintaining the country’s leading position during the information development.This thesis uses Critical Discourse Analysis as a framework to examine legal texts and provides a practical demonstration of interdisciplinary analysis in linguistics and law.At the same time,the thesis offers textual evidence for the discussion on personal information laws.Finally,grounded on the discourse analysis results,the thesis provides suggestions for China’s information law.