Corpus-Based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse.

Intro -- Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- 1. "Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?" English legal discourse past and present -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Law-related fields of language study -- 3. Register and genre perspectives on legal discourse -- 4. Legal discourse and (historical) pragmatics -- 5. Book overview -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Part I. Cross-genre and cross-linguistic variation -- 2. English and Italian land contracts -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Data and methodology -- 3. The textual structure of English and Italian land contracts -- 4. On the language of land contracts: A comparison between English and Italian -- 4.1 Further properties of sentence and clause syntax -- 5. Summary and conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 3. Conditionals in spoken courtroom and parliamentary discourse in English, French, and Spanish -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Conditionals defined -- 3. Conditionals in legal discourse -- 4. Corpora and methodology -- 5. Results and discussion -- 5.1 Conditionals in the courtroom -- 5.1.1 Frequency -- 5.1.2 Metafunction -- 5.1.3 Semantic type of condition -- 5.1.4 Modal verb in the apodosis -- 5.1.5 Markedness of the apodosis -- 5.2 Conditionals in parliamentary discourse -- 5.2.1 Frequency -- 5.2.2 Metafunctions -- 5.2.3 Semantic type of condition -- 5.2.4 Modal verb in the apodosis -- 5.2.5 Markedness of the apodosis -- 6. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 4. Part-of-speech patterns in legal genres -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Corpus and method -- 3. Results and discussion -- 3.1 Overview of differences -- 3.2 Key features in all four corpora -- 3.2.1 Singular and plural possessive nouns -- 3.3 Key features in Academic and Cases.

3.3.1 Academic and Cases: VVZ (third person singular present) -- 3.3.2 Academic and Cases: IN/that and WDT -- 3.4 Key features in Documents and Legislation -- 3.4.1 Documents and Legislation: CC (coordinating conjunctions) -- 3.4.1.1 And. Figure 1 brings to light a striking difference between Documents and the other corpora concerning and, and between Documents and Legislation and the other two corpora concerning or. First, what are the reasons for the high frequency of and in -- 3.4.1.2 Or. The coordinator or stands out as being at least twice as frequent in Documents and Legislation as in the other two corpora. To investigate this further, we looked at its collocates in these corpora. Or binomials here, as elsewhere (Dobrić Basa -- 3.4.2 Documents and Legislation: VVN (past participles) -- 3.4.3 Documents: MD (modal verbs) -- 3.4.4 Legislation: WPZ (possessive wh-pronoun) -- 3.4.5 Documents: VB (be, base form) -- 4. Summing up -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 5. A comparison of lexical bundles in spoken courtroom language across time, registers, and varieties -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Description of the corpora and method -- 2.1 Early Modern English trials -- 2.2 Present day English trials -- 2.3 The O. J. Simpson trial: Overview -- 2.3.1 Descriptions of the sub-registers in the O. J. Simpson corpus -- 2.4 Lexical bundles -- 3. A comparison of three-word lexical bundles: O. J. Simpson, PDE, and EModE -- 3.1 The O. J. Simpson corpus versus the PDE and EModE corpora -- 3.2 Bundles shared in the three corpora -- 4. Sub-registers in the O. J. Simpson trial -- 5. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 6. "It is not just a fact that the law requires this, but it is a reasonable fact" -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The concepts of evaluation and stance in legal discourse -- 3. Stance, status and the noun that-pattern -- 4. Data and method.

5. Results and discussion -- 5.1 Overview of nouns + that-clause in the three corpora -- 5.1.1 Epistemic nouns expressing certainty -- 5.1.1.1 Fact. The frequency of the noun fact corroborates previous studies which demonstrate that Law is among the disciplines with the highest occurrence of this noun (Goźdź-Roszkowski 2018a: 143). These findings suggest an underlying disciplinary-specif -- 5.1.1.2 Conclusion. The frequency of the noun conclusion is another example of the most salient findings that emerge from this comparison. These findings are surprising for two reasons. First, as Figure 1 shows, conclusions are on average much more freque -- 5.1.2 Epistemic nouns indicating likelihood -- 6. Summary and conclusions -- References -- Part II. Diachronic variation -- 7. Are law reports an 'agile' or an 'uptight' register? -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Corpora and methods -- 3. Historical change in the use of general linguistic features -- 4. Historical change in the use of popularization/colloquial features -- 5. Historical change in the use of clausal complexity features -- 6. Historical change in the use of phrasal complexity features -- 7. Conclusion -- References -- 8. Interpersonality in legal written discourse -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Sources and methodology -- 3. Results -- 3.1 Pronouns in law reports and other legal written documents -- 3.2 Diachronic variation in the use of pronouns in law reports -- 4. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 9. The evolution of a legal genre -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Genre analysis -- 3. Evolutionary perspectives on genre change -- 4. Data and methods -- 5. Move type analysis of BLPAS 1711-1860 -- 6. Move sequence analysis of BLPAS 1711-1860 -- 7. Discussion -- 8. Summary and conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References.

10. The representation of citizens and monarchy in Acts of Parliament in 1800 to 2000 -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Representation of social groups and earlier studies -- 3. Collocation analysis -- 4. Genre studies and historical pragmatics -- 5. Data: Corpus of Late Modern English Statutes -- 6. Method of analysis -- 7. Overview of the frequencies of different social groups -- 8. The representation of the citizens: Person -- 9. The representation of the monarchy -- 10. Discussion and conclusions -- Acknowledgement -- References -- 11. Drinking and crime -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Alcohol consumption, attitudes, and crime -- 3. Courtroom discourse: Data and approaches -- 4. Courtroom discourse on drunkenness -- 4.1 Expressions for drunkenness in context -- 4.2 Targets of drunkenness terms -- 4.3 Degrees of drunkenness -- 5. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Name index -- Subject index.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the research carried out over the past thirty years in the vast field of legal discourse.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.