A Pragmatic Study of Information Control in Criminal Trials in China: A Case Study of Fund-raising Fraud Trials

Abstract

Fund-raising fraud, as an emerging type of financial crime in China, had always been debated over its conviction and sentencing, due to the intricacy of its circumstances and elements of crime. After two amendments to China’s long criticised Criminal Procedure Law in 1996 and 2012, adversarial concepts and practices were introduced, giving greater attention to procedural justice, human rights protection, presumption of innocence, direct speech principle in order to achieve a more even balance in power status and right of speech between prosecution and defence. The presentation and interpretation of legal facts, which are critical to the adjudication of fund-raising frauds, are predominantly presented through discoursal interactions via manipulation of information by different litigants who become increasingly more competitive and conflictive with each other. The conflictive courtroom discourse is profoundly embedded in the asymmetrical power web interwoven between the litigants in court. The self-identities of each litigant and the impact of discoursal interactions on their member resources and institutional ideology can be reflected through analysis of their interactions. It is, therefore, of great interest and significance for the researcher to examine the information control and power status in the newly reformed criminal trial system of China from a pragmatic and discoursal perspective, through an analysis of real life fund-raising trial video recordings that have been opened to the public in the past three years. This research aims mainly to identify, describe and interpret the linguistic and pragmatic features registering information control and power relations between different litigants in courtroom discourse so as to interpret and reflect on the proceedings, procedural justice and power relations during the interactive adjudication process. The member resources (MR) of different litigants play a pivotal role in the use of discoursal strategies and conflictive interpretations of legal facts. Ideological coercions and social power asymmetry are also looked at as secondary issues which impact on the reform of criminal judicial trials, especially the adjudication of fund-raising fraud in China. Ideological reproduction or reformation process will also be touched upon based on the change of MR during conflictive interactions.