Discourse of international commercial arbitration: The case of Mainland China

As a flexible, economic and speedy dispute resolution mechanism, arbitration is becoming increasingly crucial for the fast-developing Chinese economy and trade (Chen, 1991). However, because of language and cultural differences, few discursive studies of Chinese arbitration have been conducted in the field of applied linguistics and discourse analysis. This paper aims at examining Chinese arbitration discourse from a generic perspective, by drawing on a variety of data including arbitration awards, arbitration rules and laws, and lawyers’ accounts. The research questions are what information Chinese arbitrators choose to report and how they report it in arbitration awards. Efforts will be made to describe, explain and interpret generic and rhetorical features of arbitration awards and the relationship between these features and the background Chinese arbitration context.