We describe research carried out as part of a text summarisation project for the legal domain for which we use a new XML corpus of judgments of the UK House of Lords. These judgments represent a particularly important part of public discourse due to the role that precedents play in English law. We present experimental results using a range of features and machine learning techniques for the task of predicting the rhetorical status of sentences and for the task of selecting (...) the most summary-worthy sentences from a document. Results for these components are encouraging as they achieve state-of-the-art accuracy using robust, automatically generated cue phrase information. Sample output from the system illustrates the potential of summarisation technology for legal information management systems and highlights the utility of our rhetorical annotation scheme as a model of legal discourse, which provides a clear means for structuring summaries and tailoring them to different types of users. (shrink)

The field of language teaching, both TESOL and ESP, is undergo- ing rapid changes. It is responding to new educational trends and paradigms and institutions face new challenges connected with changes in the curriculum, national tests and student needs. As a result, language teachers need to update their professional knowledge by taking on new roles, such as those of teacher- researcher. The purpose of this paper is to present new developments in the area of general language teaching research, with a (...) particular focus on meth- ods of qualitative research that might be found useful while examining certain aspects of teaching in the field of ESP, such as case studies, action research, interviews or observations. The presentation of research methods is followed by a review of research practice focused on pedagogical issues published in re- cent years in ESP journals, such as English for Specific Purposes, The Asian ESP Journal or Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Of major interest are articles on Legal English. The article concludes with suggestions for further study. (shrink)

Research using current literature on legal reasoning was conducted with the goals of (a) determining what skills are most important in good legal reasoning according to such literature, (b) determining the extent to which existing Law School Admission Test item types and subtypes are designed to assess those skills, and (c) suggesting test specifications or new or refined item types and formats that could be developed in the future to assess any important skills that appear [by (a) and (b)] to (...) be measured in a limited or minimal way by the current LSAT. So far as can be determined, such systematic research using legal reasoning literature has never been previously conducted. This report presents the findings of this research. (shrink)

Straipsnyje nagrinėjami ir gretinami dvižodžių terminų šaltiniai konstitucinės teisės aktuose lietuvių ir anglų kalbomis. Kalbant apie terminų šaltinius galima paminėti dvi tendencijas – labiau remtis vidiniais šaltiniais arba teikti pirmenybę išoriniams šaltiniams. Vienos kalbos yra atviresnės svetimų kalbų įtakai ir skolinimuisi, o kitos yra uždaresnės ir labiau linkusios maksimaliai išnaudoti savos kalbos išgales kurti naujus terminus. Tai gali būti pasiekta pasitelkiant tam tikrai kalbai būdingas darybos priemones. Kalbų atvirumo išoriniams šaltiniams laipsnis skiriasi. Taigi, skirtingų kalbų terminų kūrėjai sudarydami naujus terminus (...) remiasi skirtingais šaltiniais. Dvižodžių terminų šaltinių analizė gali būti naudinga naujų terminų kūrėjams, terminologams, vertėjams ir kalbininkams, nes ji padeda įvertinti egzistuojančius terminų kūrimo skirtingose kalbose principus ir padeda juos taisyklingai ir sistemiškai taikyti kuriant naujus daugiažodžius terminus. Straipsnyje nagrinėjami dvižodžių terminų šaltiniai, nes daugelis administracinės kalbos daugiažodžių terminų anglų ir lietuvių kalbose yra sudaryti iš dviejų žodžių. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad anglų kalbos konstitucinės teisės terminų kūrėjai yra atviresni svetimų kalbų įtakai ir, kurdami konstitucinės teisės dvižodžius terminus, jie yra linkę remtis išoriniais šaltiniais, o lietuvių kalbos terminų kūrėjai yra labiau linkę saugoti savo kalbą ir, kurdami dvižodžius terminus, labiau remiasi vidiniais šaltiniais. (shrink)

Research on legal discourse has developed according to a variety of perspectives. As for descriptive accounts, two approaches are noteworthy. Firstly, Anglophone scholars have dealt with legal language from a genre-based viewpoint. Secondly, French studies have focused on argumentation in judicial texts, by considering the forms of reasoning involved in it and, albeit more rarely, its linguistic constituents. This paper aims at reinforcing the linguistic component of the analysis of legal discourse, by carrying out a corpus-based genre analysis on a (...) sample of 40 judgments. First of all, the results of the investigation of the genre structure of judgments will be presented. The comparative approach adopted will show that the differences between European and English/Irish judgments mainly concern the generic move Arguing the case. Secondly, analysis will concentrate in more detail on one of the most frequent tools used in the discursive construction of argumentation within the aforementioned move, i.e. the widely spread reporting verb HOLD. A study of its concordances suggests that it is used in all types of judgments as a meta-argumentative operator signalling either an authoritative stance taken by the Court or an equally authoritative reported argumentation of another judge or court. (shrink)

The Bristol Inquiry is arguably one of the most important cases of judicial medical investigation held in the United Kingdom, which continues to raise important insights into the social construction of medical and scientific risks. As a way of marking the inquiry’s tenth anniversary year, this article returns to an important conversation held between noted pediatric cardiothoracic and cardiovascular specialists, on days 49 and 50 of the inquiry’s proceedings. Their conversance principally describes a pathway of scientific advancement across four decades. (...) Risks, and the avoidance of medical error, represent important subtopics of the ensuing historical narrative, within which the experts describe opportunities for error as diminishing in-line with paradigmatic advancement. The telling of this story of risk mitigation involves the expurgation of considerable sensitivities to scientific uncertainty. In analyzing this example of expert scientific witness testimony, the article primarily considers how representations of uncertainty are formulated in language. The article concludes that, in this instance, the social construction of risk and uncertainty were heteroglossically premised upon language catalysts, cognitive metaphors, and logic-based mathematical rubrics. (shrink)

In this article we examine the role of vocative forms of address in shaping the political space in public/political discourse. We are particularly interested in strategic uses of forms of address by participants in political debates in order to gain legitimacy for their ideologies. Our data come from four formal television debates between Lech Wałęsa, the former Solidarity trade union leader and president of Poland, and two other Polish politicians, which were held between 1988 and 1995. Due to this historical (...) perspective, we are able to contextualize discursive patterns in the rapidly changing political and social situation in Poland, and show the diachronic development of the ideological underpinnings of discourse. (shrink)

To prevent domains from cyber-piracy, the WIPO offers private and confidential procedures tasked to address the legitimate use of a domain name. WIPO domain name arbitration consists of an alternative dispute resolution process in which one or more panelists make a binding decision over the legitimacy of a domain. This article investigates the structure of the discourse of this professional genre. Following Maley, this study focuses, first, on spotting the generic moves of WIPO domain name arbitration decisions. Second, the analysis (...) unveils patterns shaping WIPO domain name arbitration decisions, hence exploring how discursive features work within this specialized discourse. Third, it examines whether corpus data reveal that this type of professional discourse has entered into a process of standardization. The study is based on Bhatia’s multi-perspective four-space model of discourse. This analytical framework emphasizes a multidisciplinary and multidimensional perspective which highlights that discourse is indistinguishable from constructing reality. (shrink)

Certain religious texts are deemed part of legal texts that are characterised by high sensitivity and sacredness. Amongst such religious texts are Islamic legal texts that are replete with Islamic legal terms that designate particular legal concepts peculiar to Islamic legal system and legal culture. However, from the syntactic perspective, Islamic legal texts prove lengthy and condensed, with an extensive use of coordinated, subordinate and relative clauses, which separate the main verb from the subject, and which, of course, carry a (...) heavy load of legal detail. The present paper seeks to examine the syntactic features of Islamic legal texts and the syntactic translation implications involved through studying three Islamic legal Arabic excerpts and their English translations. The paper argues that amongst the syntactic features of Islamic legal texts are nominalisation, participles, modals and complex structures. It also claims that the syntactic translation implications are indeed syntactic features of legal English, which are sentence combining versus sentence break, nominalisation, wh-deletion, passivisation, modals and multiple negations. Moreover, nominalisation, modality and complex structures are features of both Islamic legal texts and legal English, albeit with varying degrees. (shrink)