4 Methodology 7

4.1 Method 7

4.2 Data collection 8

5 Linguistic analysis of Relative Concealment in trial adjudication in light of the Spring and Autum Annals 9

5.1 Tolerance of family affection in social justice reflected in legal reasoning 9

5.2 family as a conceptual legal subject 11

5.3 Law as elusive in face of kinship 13

Conclusion 16

Acknowledgments 17

Bibliography 18

1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the study 

Chinese traditional legal culture has a long history and profound connotation. Some of the legal principle and the system have important values and significance, and “concealment of offenses by close relatives” (hereinafter referred to as “Relative Concealment”) is one of the most representative one. As one of the Confucian classics ideas, philosophy of “Relative Concealment” has been operated as a basic guiding principle of criminal cases and played a vital role in the long-term feudal society in China (Zhang Zeyi, 2010: 81-84). 文献综述

Many Western countries have retained the formulation of "Relative Concealment" in the criminal law and procedure law which concrete expression to Privilege of Relatives Witness, while China current criminal justice system has completely abandoned this law. According to statistics, contemporarily North Korea, China and a few other countries, that own the ancient prevalence of "Relative Concealment", happens to outlaw it. As a maximum expression of Chinese traditional legal ethics, the existence of “Relative Concealment” must have been reasonable and necessary. 

1.2 Research topic and questions 

Family is the most basic unit of the society, in case of man-made destruction, not only endangering the survival of the human instinctive love and family, but also accumulating into the hidden crisis of social unrest. In order to maintain the most basic social values and the kinship of the family members, sometimes people have to give up the whole to protect the family. On this basis, the researcher intends，from the systemic functional linguistic point of view, to probe into the profound influence on ancient Chinese legal culture, and offer more linguistic examples to support the Confucianization of law.

The research questions are as follows: 

What is the legal reasoning reflected in tolerance of family affection in social justice ? 

What is the semantic feature of the "Relative Concealment" principle in text? 

What is the ideological theory of the Confucian classics in chapters and sections analysis? 

How is the notion “Relative Concealment” intertextually reflected in the criminal case in ancient China?  

1.3 Structure of the thesis

This thesis consist of five chapters. Chapter One shows the research background, topic, questions, and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two begins with definitions of the criminal case adjudication in light of the Spring and Autumn Annals, philosophy of "Relative Concealment", as well as ancient Chinese legal culture, followed by a review of previous studies in thesis proposal and literature summary. Chapter Three describes the theoretical frameworks of systemic functional linguistics, including linguistic field, tenor, mode and so on. Chapter four explains the methodology and data collection. Chapter five describes the research findings based on criminal case adjudication in light of the Spring and Autumn Annals and the analysis of Confucian classics.