Corpus Based Research On Variation In English Legal Discourse

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the research carried out over the past thirty years in the vast field of legal discourse. The focus is on how such research has been influenced and shaped by developments in corpus linguistics and register analysis, and by the emergence from the mid 1990s of historical pragmatics as a branch of pragmatics concerned with the scrutiny of historical texts in their context of writing. The five chapters in Part I (together with the introductory chapter) offer a wide spectrum of the latest approaches to the synchronic analysis of cross-genre and cross-linguistic variation in legal discourse. Part II addresses diachronic variation, illustrating how a diversity of methods, such as multi-dimensional analysis, move analysis, collocation analysis, and Darwinian models of language evolution can uncover new understandings of diachronic linguistic phenomena.

This book is a collection of papers dealing with the study of language varieties from a corpus linguistics perspective. They focus on the analysis of language in different communicative and professional settings, meeting current lines of research, such as teaching and learning, translation, domain-specific grammatical and textual phenomena, linguistic variation and gender.

This book focuses on aspects of variation and change in language use in spoken and written discourse on the basis of corpus analyses, providing new descriptive insights, and new methods of utilising small specialized corpora for the description of language variation and change. The sixteen contributions included in this volume represent a variety of diverse views and approaches, but all share the common goal of throwing light on a crucial dimension of discourse: the dialogic interactivity between the spoken and written. Their foci range from papers addressing general issues related to corpus analysis of spoken dialogue to papers focusing on specific cases employing a variety of analytical tools, including qualitative and quantitative analysis of small and large corpora. The present volume constitutes a highly valuable tool for applied linguists and discourse analysts as well as for students, instructors and language teachers.

Focusing on the multi-faceted topic of Eurolects, this volume brings together knowledge and methodologies from various disciplines, including sociolinguistics, legal linguistics, corpus linguistics, and translation studies. The legislative varieties of eleven EU official and working languages (Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Maltese, Polish, Spanish) are analyzed using corpus methodologies in order to investigate the variational dynamics and translation-induced patterns of the different languages. The underlying assumption is that, within the sociolinguistic continua of the EU languages, it is possible to single out specific legislative varieties (Eurolects) that originate at a supra-national level. This research hypothesis is strongly supported by the empirical findings derived from detailed corpus analyses of each language. This work represents the first systematic and comprehensive linguistic research conducted on a wide range of EU languages using the same protocol and applying corpus methodologies to the extensive Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus.

Corpus-based translation studies has become a major paradigm and research methodology and has investigated a wide variety of topics in the last two decades. The contributions to this volume add to the range of corpus-based studies by providing examples of some less explored applications of corpus analysis methods to translation research. They show that the area keeps evolving as it constantly opens up to different frameworks and approaches, from appraisal theory to process-oriented analysis, and encompasses multiple translation settings, including (indirect) literary translation, machine (assisted)-translation and the practical work of professional legal translators. The studies included in the volume also expand the range of application of corpus applications in terms of the tools used to accomplish the research tasks outlined.

The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics (CHECL) surveys the breadth of corpus-based linguistic research on English, including chapters on collocations, phraseology, grammatical variation, historical change, and the description of registers and dialects. The most innovative aspects of the CHECL are its emphasis on critical discussion, its explicit evaluation of the state of the art in each sub-discipline, and the inclusion of empirical case studies. While each chapter includes a broad survey of previous research, the primary focus is on a detailed description of the most important corpus-based studies in this area, with discussion of what those studies found, and why they are important. Each chapter also includes a critical discussion of the corpus-based methods employed for research in this area, as well as an explicit summary of new findings and discoveries.

The primary goal of this book is to reach a better understanding of how the digital revolution has affected language and discourse practices in the field of law. It also explores the complex nature of the techniques and discursive strategies which emerge in the relationship between the different stakeholders (including non-experts) thanks to technological advances. By adopting a discourse analytical perspective which combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the book explores the hybridity of new genres and communicative processes. It provides an interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns, as well as any solutions already adopted in their professional areas. Their insights converge in a truly multidisciplinary effort to devise and build advanced networks of knowledge to facilitate the interpretation of data in the field of legal linguistics - with a specific focus on digitalisation processes which concern contemporary legal discourse. The book is meant for scholars interested in the evolution of the interconnection between language and law in digital environments. It also addresses law and linguistics students, ideally with some training in language analysis and particular interest in new media and genres. All necessary linguistic or legal technicalities are, however, approached while bearing in mind a wide range of potential backgrounds and levels of education.

This Research Handbook offers a comprehensive study of jurilinguistics that not only presents the latest international research findings among academics and practitioners, but also provides a new approach to the phenomena and nature of communicative flexibility, legal genres, vulnerability of interlingual legal communication, and the cultural landscape of legal translation.

Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution together with a sustained criticism of legal exegesis and `legalese' more generally. In the first part of the work the doctrinal history of the legal discipline and its concepts of language, text and sign are examined and assessed. In the second part the contemporary disciples of linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies are brought to bear upon the task of constructing a theory of legal discourse as a linguistics of legal power.

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis highlights the diversity, breadth, and depth of corpus approaches to discourse analysis, compiling new and original research from notable scholars across the globe. Chapters showcase recent developments influenced by the exponential growth in linguistic computing, advances in corpus design and compilation, and the applications of sound quantitative and interpretive techniques in analyzing text and discourse patterns. Key discourse domains covered by 35 empirical chapters include: • Research contexts and methodological considerations; • Naturally occurring spoken, professional, and academic discourse; • Corpus approaches to conversational discourse, media discourse, and professional and academic writing. The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis is key reading for both experienced and novice researchers working at the intersection of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, as well as anyone undertaking study in these areas, as well as anyone interested in related fields and adjacent research approaches.