Abstract
The paper aims to explore documentary evidence in legal discourse from a socio-semiotic perspective and argues there is reconstructive and deconstructive nature in legal narratives and the hegemony in legal narratives can be regarded as conventional. Based on case studies relevant to Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance in Hong Kong, the paper finds that spatial manipulation and voice manipulation were employed as strategies by court to create legal hegemony in narratives. Unraveling such strategies helps to deconstruct legal hegemony. The paper concludes that documentary evidence is characterized by the essential features of a sign, which can be subject to the influence of spatial and temporal manipulations, because such kind of evidence is subject to multiple interpretations.
About the authors
Le Cheng (b. 1976) is a professor and Director of the Center for Legal Discourse and Translation at Zhejiang University and an adjunct professor at China University of Political Science and Law 〈chengle163@hotmail.com〉. His research interests include semiotics, terminology, language and law, and discourse analysis. His publications include “Attribution and judicial control in Chinese court judgments: A corpus based study” (2011); “Legal Interpretation: Meaning as social construction” (with W. Cheng, 2012); “Jury instructions in Hong Kong: A Gricean perspective” (with W. Cheng, 2013); and “Reformulating and translating Chinese deontic modality” (2013).
Winnie Cheng (b. 1958) is a professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University 〈egwcheng@polyu.edu.hk〉. Her research interests include ESP, intercultural business and professional communication, intercultural pragmatics, and corpus linguistics. Her publications include “Teaching professional English and communication: Forming alliances with the industries” (2011); “Legislative bilingualization in Hong Kong: A case study of domestic and cohabitation relationships violence ordinance” (2011); “Speech acts, facework, and politeness: Relationship-building across cultures” (2012); and Exploring corpus linguistics: Language in action (2012).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
