Search results

AbstractSpeech reporting is an important linguistic tool for criminal judgements to represent facts and evidence and state reasons for conviction and judgement. This paper analyzes speech reporting in 500 Chinese criminal judgements and identifies three major findings. First, speech reporting in criminal judgements includes two general types,procedural reportingandsubstantive reporting, both of which can be further categorized into three sub-types,direct reporting,indirect reporting, andnarrative report of speech act. Second, procedural reporting mainly appears in the beginning and body parts of a criminal judgement to introduce the origin of the case, clarify relevant legal concepts, indicate the basis of conviction and judgement, and maintain, approve, and reject the judgement of a lower court, performing the function of maintaining procedural justice. Third, substantive reporting mainly occurs in the body part of a criminal judgement to state, summarize, generalize, and clarify relevant facts and evidence, serving substantive justice.

With the popularization of higher education, its quality assurance and enhancement have gained top priority in the work of governments and higher education institutions across the world. In order to meet the needs of society for the booming economy and globalization, The New Zealand government has taken effective measures to develop and improve its higher education quality assurance system to maintain its international reputation. This paper first introduces the background of New Zealand higher education quality assurance system, and then examines the structure, function and operation of its internal and external quality assurance systems. Based on a comparative analysis of the quality assurance systems in New Zealand and China, useful recommendations such as diversified standards and multi-engagement, etc., are given, which aims to contribute to the progress of the quality assurance system of Chinese higher education.

Abstract
Intertextuality, an important concept in semiotics, refers to the property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts. This paper analyzes specific and generic intertextuality of Chinese courtroom discourse. In the analysis of specific intertextuality, it is found that 1) "specific and exact news source" and "implicit news source" are indicated in the trials, while "seemingly real news source" is not found in the data; 2) "direct reporting", "indirect reporting", and "narrative report of speech act" are used in the trials, while "free indirect reporting" is not indicated. The analysis of generic intertextuality shows that courtroom discourse, especially the subgenre "evidence-producing", is not only a mixture of different genres but also of different styles.

Abstract
This paper analyzes the transitivity system in the audio recording transcripts of eight court trials, employing relevant theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is found that: ( 1 ) the following four types of process clauses appear frequently in the courtroom discourse: material, verbal, relational and mental, of which the number of material process clauses is the biggest. Behavioural and existential process clauses appear much less frequently than the above four types; (2) The frequencies of different types of process have a positive correlation with their functions in the court trials; ( 3 ) The choice of different process types and participants reflects the institutional role, stances and purposes of the speakers.

Abstract
Protecting the environment during economic growth is a challenge facing every country. This paper focuses on two regulatory measures that China has adopted to incentivize air quality improvement: publishing a daily air pollution index (API) for major cities since 2000 and linking the API to performance evaluations of local governments. In particular, China defines a day with an API at or below 100 as a blue sky day. Starting in 2003, a city with at least 80% blue sky days in a calendar year (among other criteria) qualified for the "national environmental protection model city" award. This cutoff was increased to 85% in 2007.Using officially reported API data from 37 large cities during 2000-2009, we find a significant discontinuity at the threshold of 100 and this discontinuity is of a greater magnitude after 2003. Moreover, we find that the model cities were less likely to report API right above 100 when they were close to the targeted blue sky days in the fourth quarter of the year when or before they won the model city award. That being said, we also find significant correlation of API with two alternative measures of air pollution – namely visibility as reported by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), corrected for meteorological conditions, from NASA satellites. The discontinuity around 100 suggests that count of blue sky days could have been subject to data manipulation; nevertheless, API does contain useful information about air pollution.