Abstracts - Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

ZHANG CHENQUAN, GUANGDONG SECOND UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION, CHINATHE APPLICATION OF APPRAISAL THEORY TO THE LEGAL ARGUMENTATION OFCOURT VERDICTIn this paper we report a functional analysis of the legal argument of the criminalverdict by the Supreme Court of the P.R.C, that is, to give an appraisal discussion tothe agents in the clause process, which include ´´ the court itself, the defendant inthe case of re-trail.Liu Yong and his criminal acts,court verdicts of the first andsecond instances, consequences caused by the crimes, the illicit money and thecriminal plots, etc.´´, hoping to explain legally why the Supreme Court of the P.R.Cdecided to revise the written judgment of the second instance and to give apreliminary linguistic discussion on the positive changes brought about by theappraisal theory for legal argumentation. It is shown that Systemic-functionalapproach can play an important role in legal reasoning .Key words: appraisal theory; system of attitude; legal argumentation; Liu Yong`scase.ReferencesJ. R. Martin, Rose David.2003.Working with discourse. London: Continuum.S.Eggins & D. Slade.1997. Analyzing casual conversation. London: Cassell.C. Painter. 1998. Learning through language in early childhood. London: Cassell.C. Coffin. 2002. The voice of history: theorizing the interpersonal semantics of historicaldiscourses. [J],Text 22(4).Li Zhanzi,2004.Appraisal theory:its appliation and problems in discourse analysis.[J],Educational Research on Foreign Languages & Arts(7).Wang Zhenhua, 2001. The appraisal system and its operation. [J],Foreign Languages(6).The final court verdict for Liu Yong`s case by the Supreme Court of the P.R.C.PAPER SESSION 9C - ROOM 3 - FRIDAY, 28 JULYISFC38 Book of Abstracts Page 205 Lisbon, July 2011