The Powers and Compound Functions of the Discourse Mode about Pettifoggers’ Retribution for Evildoing

The discourse mode that pettifoggers would receive retribution for their evildoing done before had taken initial shape since the Song Dynasty, and was constantly duplicated, expanded and innovated in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. This discourse mode had the double features of the official and the folk. The official exhorted the scholars not to run the pettifogger’s business by making use of this discourse mode, hoping to help reduce the backup strength of the existing pettifogger’s team from the source, while the populace vented their distaste for the pettifoggers who instigated people to sue and sought benefits from the litigation, and expressed their desire for justice in this way. The official’s crackdown on the pettifoggers caused the pettifoggers, as an illegal group, lack of opportunities and resources to openly develop their own inner self-disciplined " strong” professional ethics, and thus such an external embedded discourse mode served as a functional substitute which imposed a " weak” restriction on the individual pettifogger and the line of business of them as a whole to some extent. To sum up, in order to deeply understand the function of the discourse mode of pettifoggers’ retribution for their evildoing, we must pay attention to the above-mentioned different implications for the official, the public and the pettifoggers themselves. In addition, an in-depth analysis of this discourse mode can provide some useful academic inspiration for the discussion of the methodology of Chinese legal history research.