Burying attitudes in words: Linguistic realization of the shift of judges’ court conciliation style

AbstractCourt conciliation conducted by judges in Chinese courts is often seen in a positive light as resolving civil disputes efficiently. However, it is sometimes also severely criticized for judges’ malpractice in pressing parties to settle by revealing adjudication results. Sadly, except for mere criticism against this kind of phenomenon and abstract provisions on forbidding this kind of malpractice, little has been done to provide a detailed description of what it is and how to avoid it. This paper, based on authentic conciliation data and an interview with two judges, intends to conduct a linguistic analysis of the above problem. This paper argues that, while in theory legal discourse should be explicit, judges in court conciliation need to bury their attitudes in words when it comes to the rendering of attitudes and suggestions. This paper first analyzes the dilemma concerning how much pressure to be imposed upon which party, and then analyzes linguistic features of judges’ coercive and persuasive conciliation styles, and finally offers suggestions as to the linguistic shift of conciliation style from coercion to persuasion. This paper concludes that such malpractice as coercing parties to settle may be linguistically avoided when judges learn to bury their attitudes in words and leave parties to make voluntary choices.