On Features of Legal Terms Applied in the Criminal Case News: Based on Xinran Ji Reports

Xia DAI, Xinjiang TIAN

Abstract


The legal terms stand as an essential part of legal language representing specialized concepts in laws, acts and regulations, whose distinguishing features remains, even with the applications in other non-legal instruments, and keep affecting the writing style of legal instruments, explicitly, the case news. Criminal cases are the main staples reported in case news, because people’s preferences, social controversies and public policies are able to be indicated in criminal cases. Furthermore, criminal cases can also inspect senses of social justice and morality in a more profound perspective, therefore the criminal case news is more valuable than the civil case news. But relatively speaking there are numerous legal terms being involved in criminal news reports, which requires reporters or editors should posses the corresponding attainment of legal knowledge, master the features of legal language and precisely understand the relation between the legal terms and the news story so that the news events could be represented in the presence of readers objectively and veritably, at the same time the communication effects made by news media could be actually exerted.
This paper selects news reports of the case of Chinese graduate Xinran Ji studying in America murdered from media as research texts, which combine with features of the legal terms and criminal case news to add up and analyze the legal terms utilized in news reports on the case. In the end, it is hoped that the summary on features of the legal term applied in criminal case news would be drew out to contribute some inspirations and reflections.


Keywords


Legal terms features; Criminal case news; Practicality

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdollah. (2014). Teens charged with murdering Xinran Ji, USC student from China. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/xinran-ji-usc-teens-charged-murder_n_5632291.html, 2014-7-29/2017-3-25.

Brady. (2014). Five arrested after Chinese student was found beaten to death in his apartment near University of Southern California. Retrieved from , 2014-7-29/2017-3-25.

CBS News. (2014). 2 adults, 3 minors, arrested in fatal assault on USC student. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-adults-3-minors-arrested-in-fatal-assault-on-usc-student/, 2014-7-29/2017-3-25.

CBS News. (n.d.). Cops: USC grad student found dead in apartment after beating. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-university-southern-california-grad-student-found-dead-in-apartment-after-beating/, 2014-7-28/2017-3-25.

Fox News. (2015). Video shows group of teens attacking Chinese USC student. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/01/14/video-shows-group-teens-attacking-chinese-usc-student.html, 2015-1-14/2017-3-25.

Itule, B. D, & Anderson, D. A. (2006). News writing and reporting for today’s media (L. Y. Jia & J. C. Hua, Trans., pp.377-405). China Renmin University Press

La Voice & Crandall. (2015). Arraignment postponed in Xinran Ji case. Retrieved from , 2015-1-29/2017-3-25.

Li, L. R. (2013). Introduction to journalism (p.168). Fudan University Press.

Li, S. (2014). Status hearing in Xinran Ji case. Retrieved from http://www.atvn.org/news/2014/11/xinran-ji-case, 2014-11-6/2017-3-25.

Liu, B. (2005). Legal language norms in news reports. Chinese Journalists, (7), 66-67.

Pan, J. (2005). The analysis of languages in Chinese-English crime reports (p.2). Shanghai International Studies University.

Robinson. (2014). Chinese graduate student beaten to death near university of Southern California. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2705320/Chinese-graduate-student-beaten-death-near-University-Southern-California.html, 2014-7-25/2017-3-25.

Stallworth. (2014). Usc student death: 4 suspects plead not guilty. Retrieved from , 2014-8-12/
2017-3-25.

The Guardian. (2015). Los Angeles teenagers to stand trial in USC student Xinran Ji’s murder. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/15/la-teens-murder-trial-usc-student, 2015-1-15/2017-3-25.

Xinhua. (2016). Teen convicted in murder of Chinese USC student. Retrieved from , 2016-10-17/2017-3-25.

Xue, Z. F. (2011). Narrative research on legal news discourse (pp.93-94). Shanghai International Studies University.

Yost, C. (2012). The principles of journalism (pp.180-181). Beijing: China University of Communication Press.

Zhang, J. (2004). Stylistic analysis of English news and model essays (pp.8-14, 34-40, 57). Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/9728

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2017 Xia Dai

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submissionhttp://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture