27.4827, Calls: English, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Czech Republic

Sat Nov 26 23:04:48 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4827. Sat Nov 26 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4827, Calls: English, Text/Corpus Linguistics/Czech Republic

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2016 18:04:36
From: Paula Rodríguez-Puente [rodriguezppaula at uniovi.es]
Subject: Advances in Corpora of Legal English: Investigating Variation in Legal Discourse

Full Title: Advances in Corpora of Legal English: Investigating Variation in Legal Discourse 

Date: 24-May-2017 - 24-May-2017
Location: Prague, Czech Republic 
Contact Person: Paula Rodríguez-Puente
Meeting Email: rodriguezppaula at uniovi.es
Web Site: http://icame.ff.cuni.cz/pre-conference-workshops/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 10-Jan-2017 

Meeting Description:

Convenors: Teresa Fanego (teresa.fanego at usc.es) & Paula Rodríguez-Puente
(rodriguezppaula at uniovi.es)

Keynote speaker: Douglas Biber (Northern Arizona)

The International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME) will
hold the 38th conference (ICAME 38) at the Faculty of Arts Charles University
in Prague between 24-28 May 2017 (http://icame.ff.cuni.cz/)

As part of the programme of the conference, pre-conference workshops will be
held on 24 May 2017. 

Call for Papers:

As part of ICAME38 (http://icame.ff.cuni.cz/), pre-conference workshops will
be held on 24 May 2017. 

As convenors of the workshop “Advances in corpora of legal English:
investigating variation in legal discourse”, we are pleased to invite the
submission of abstracts for full papers and work-in-progress reports. 

Abstracts should be approx. 400 words (excluding references). All submissions
(in pdf format) should be sent by email to Teresa Fanego at
teresa.fanego at usc.es or Paula Rodríguez-Puente at rodriguezppaula at uniovi.es

The approach adopted in this workshop is primarily linguistic. We will
therefore be concerned with issues such as the following:

(1) Existing typologies of legal discourse, which are based mostly on
contemporary usage, account for the heterogeneity of legal language by
distinguishing legal texts in terms of:

- Their degree of formality–frozen, formal, consultative and casual are labels
often used in this connection; see Danet (1980)
- Their communicative purpose–whether this is academic, juridical or
legislative; see Bhatia (1987)
- Their mode (written vs oral)

Questions that emerge here pertain, first, to whether such categorizations can
also be fruitfully applied to the analysis of legal discourse in earlier
stages of English. Secondly, to the availability, or non-availability, of
databases adequate to carry out such an analysis.
To address both questions, the workshop will survey recent developments in the
compilation of electronic corpora containing legal documents of various kinds,
both synchronic and diachronic. 

(2) Both classic  and recent treatments of the language and law interface have
drawn attention to various lexical, morphosyntactic and discoursal features
that are claimed to be inextricably linked to the language of the law: use of
Norman words that have not found their way into general currency, heavy use of
compound adverbs such as hereof, whereof, hereinafter, binomial and
multinomial expressions (e.g. within Singapore or elsewhere), lexical bundles
and phraseological units (e.g. the benefit of, it is clear that, on the basis
that), intricate patterns of coordination and subordination, impersonal style
and frequent use of passive constructions, conditional constructions, etc. The
problem, however, is that exemplification of all such features tends to draw
heavily on legislative texts such as acts of parliament and statutory
instruments, these being, in fact, the only legal writings usually discussed
in the relevant literature. The workshop, therefore, will also address the
question of internal variation across legal genres: how and to what extent do
legal genres differ from, or are similar to, each other?

(3) Other important dimensions of variation in legal discourse pertain to
diachronic variation (how does the current legal language, or languages,
differ from the historic one?) and to so-called ‘external’ variation (how does
legal language differ from other registers, or from other languages for
special purposes?). The development of Multi-Dimensional analysis from the
1990s onwards (Biber 1988, 1995, 2001, 2013, etc.), and the recent advances in
the compilation of synchronic and diachronic corpora of legal have now
provided the resources enabling researchers to carry out corpus-based
comprehensive analyses of variation in legal discourse over time, as well as
relative to other genres and registers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

        Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4827	
----------------------------------------------------------