A matrix of legislative speech acts for Chinese and British statutes

By conducting a synchronic comparison between Chinese and British statutes and a diachronic comparison between the original and current versions of Chinese statutes on intellectual property rights, this paper presents a matrix of legislative speech acts in Chinese and British statutes. The results show that legislative speech acts in Chinese statutes are made at two levels: (1) performatives carrying legislative force; and (2) legislative sentences containing modals. Modals far outnumber performatives in materialization of legislative speech acts, which is believed to be the socio-pragmatic characteristics of the legislative discourse. This coincides with British statutes. There are discrepancies among the three in terms of materialization and occurring frequencies, which are suggested to be rooted in the cultural traditions and social development stage of a particular country. Theoretically, when transplanting law, it is necessary to take language and its materialization into consideration in legislation and revision of existing legislation. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.