Weiming Liu
Northwest University of Political Science &Law,Xi'an, Shaanxi, P. R. China

Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts in Chinese Judge’s Attached Discourse

From 2002 to 2003, more and more courts in China are introducing some judicial reforms.One of them is to improve trial language.

In these courts, the judges attach what they would like to say or comment on the cases concerned to the end of court verdicts in a written form. This is the judge’s attached discourse, which is similar to obiter dictum, but not exactly the same. Since Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People’s Court took this special measure in 1998, there have appeared some doubts and strong oppositions. These two quite different ideas have aroused heated academic debate. This paper is to investigate and analyse the judge’s attached discourse according to the theory --illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, and try to prove its feasibility and reasonableness, also its limitations. By analysing three civil cases through linguistic theories, the paper shows that the judge’s attached discourse really works. It is really convincing.Just because of this, it can be called “tender court decision” to some extent,and so we can come to the conclusion that the judge’s attached discourse is feasible and reasonable. In conclusion, the paper discusses three types of limitations and problems the judge’s attached discourse has. Firstly, a perlocutionary act does not have necessary connections with an illocutionary act because many factors have an effect on the consequence. Secondly, this problem triggers the second— the expressions of the attached discourse. The expressions should be deeply studied and carefully advised, so as to bring in strong illocotionary force and to move the litigants. Without proper expressions, the judge’s attached discourse will not achieve the expected perlocutionary act. Thirdly, the judge’s attached discourse is mainly applicable to such cases as support for parents and grandparents, bringing up children,succession, divorce and the like.