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Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 26:3 (2025) ► pp.438–466

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Complaining in historical Chinese criminal trials

 | Dalian University of Foreign Languages
 | University of Hamburg | elte Research Centre for Linguistics | Hellenic American University
 | Dalian University of Foreign Languages
 | Dalian University of Foreign Languages | elte Research Centre for Linguistics | University of Maribor
Published online: 28 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.25012.han
Abstract
This study examines late-imperial Chinese criminal trials, starting from the observation that, in historical Chinese criminal trials, the speech act Complain is not only surprisingly frequent but is also often realised by the magistrate conducting the trial. We examine Complains in a corpus drawn from late imperial Chinese gong’an 公案 (literally, ‘criminal case’) novels. Whilst fictive in nature, such novels feature courtroom interactions in a turn-to-turn fashion, imitating spoken language. Gong’an novels are perhaps the best available sources for pragmatic analysis, since in historical China criminal trials were not transcribed. We examined our data through the lens of ritual, a finite typology of speech acts, and an interactional system. Our analysis shows that Complains represent an important part of historical Chinese courtroom investigations because they allowed magistrates to win over the trial’s audience and also to justify their judgments morally.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1The interactional allocation of Complains in our corpus
      • Phase 1.Announcement of the crime
      • Phase 2.Courtroom investigation
      • Phase 3.Making a verdict
    • 4.2The role of Complains in the institution of historical Chinese criminal trials
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (59)
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