Chapter published in:
Observing Eurolects: Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law
Edited by Laura Mori
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86] 2018
► pp. 2–26

Chapter 1
Introduction

The Eurolect Observatory Project

This chapter presents the research framework of the Eurolect Observatory Project. The starting hypothesis of this research project is that language contact through translation of EU legislation has resulted in the creation and dissemination of standardised lexical variants, structural features and textual patterns in many EU official and working languages. The Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus was compiled to make it possible to describe such features in eleven legislative languages. The corpus enabled the research team to collect evidence of language in use in order to confirm/disconfirm the existence of a macro-variety of legal language – known as Eurolect – generated in the context of the EU legislative multilingual drafting process. A common research template was developed and adopted by all the researchers in their respective chapters, to categorise results obtained from the corpus via a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Keywords: Eurolect, cross-language contact, legislative language, corpus linguistics, language variation patterns
Article outline
  • 1.The research project
  • 2.The EU multilingual setting as a language contact scenario
  • 3.Research goal: Eurolect or not?
  • 4.Research question and methodology
  • 5.The project Research Template
    • 5.1Lexical level
    • 5.2Morphological level
    • 5.3Morphosyntactic and syntactic level
    • 5.4Textual level
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 06 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.86.01mor
References
Ajani, G., & Rossi, P.
(2006) Corenza del diritto privato europeo e multilinguismo. In V. Jacometti & B. Pozzo (Eds.), Le politiche linguistiche delle istituzioni comunitarie dopo l’allargamento. Redazione, traduzione e interpretazione degli atti giuridici comunitari e il loro impatto sull’armonizzazione del diritto europeo (pp. 119–139). Milan: Giuffrè editore.Google Scholar
Baker, P.
(2010) Sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Bednárová-Gibová, Klaudia
(2016) Towards an understanding of EU translation. University of Presov. http://​www​.pulib​.sk​/web​/kniznica​/elpub​/dokument​/Bednarova3
Bhatia, V. K., Candlin, C. N., & Evangelisti Allori, P.
(Eds.) (2008) Language, culture and the law. The formulation of legal concepts across systems and cultures (Linguistic Insights 64). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Biel, Ł.
(2014) Lost in the Eurofog: The textual fit of translated law. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Caruana, S.
(2009) Terminology of Italian origin used in EU Maltese. A case of linguistic “Europeanisation”? In B. Comrie, R. Fabri, E. Hume, M. Mifsud, T. Stolz, & M. Vanhove (Eds.), Introducing Maltese linguistics (Studies in Language Companion Series 113) (pp. 355–375). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Catenaccio, P.
(2008) Implementing council directive 1993/13/EEU on unfair terms in consumer contracts in Great Britain. A case for intra-linguistic translation? In V. K. Bhatia, C. N. Candlin & P. Evangelisti Allori (Eds.), Language, culture and the law. The formulation of legal concepts across systems and cultures (Linguistic Insights 64) (pp. 259–280). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Caterina, R., & Rossi, P.
(2008) L’italiano giuridico. In B. Pozzo & M. Timoteo (Eds.), Europa e linguaggi giuridici (pp. 185–208). Milan: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar
Cavagnoli, S. & Mori, L.
Eds. in press Gender in legislative languages. From EU to national law in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish Berlin Frank & Timme
Cortelazzo, M. A.
(2013) Leggi italiane e direttive europee a confronto. In S. Ondelli (Ed.), Realizzazioni testuali ibride in contesto europeo. Lingue dell’UE e lingue nazionali a confronto (pp. 57–66). Trieste: EUT.Google Scholar
Coulmas, F.
(Ed.) (1991) A language policy for the European community. Prospects and quandaries. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
European Commission. Directorate General of Translation
(2009) Translating for a multilingual community. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.Google Scholar
(2010) Study on lawmaking in the EU multilingual environment. Hungary: Cielito Lindo Kommunikációs Szolgáltató Bt.Google Scholar
European Commission
. Directorate General of Translation (2015) DGT Translation Quality Guidelines (2015) <http://​ec​.europa​.eu​/translation​/maltese​/guidelines​/documents​/dgt​_translation​_quality​_guidelines​_en​.pdf
European Union
(2015) Joint practical guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. http://​eur​-lex​.europa​.eu​/content​/techleg​/EN​-legislative​-drafting​-guide​.pdf
Felici, A.
(2010) Translating EU law: legal issues and multiple dynamics. Perspectives. Studies in Translatology, 18(2), 95–108.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2013) ‘Human Rights’ across time and space: A cross-linguistic analysis of performatives in English and Italian. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 23(1), 31–43.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2015) Translating EU legislation from a lingua franca: Advantages and disadvantages. In S. Šarčević (Ed.), Language and culture in EU law: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 123–140). London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ferreri, S.
(2005) The drafting of statutes: A difficult task, especially across borders. In B. Pozzo (Ed.), Ordinary language and legal language (pp. 109–124). Milan: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar
Gallas, T.
(1999) Coredazione e traduzione giuridica nella legislazione multilingue, in particolare quella comunitaria. Quaderni di Libri e Riviste d’Italia, 43(IV), 135–147.Google Scholar
(2006) Il diritto comunitario inteso come “diritto diplomatico” ed il suo linguaggio. In V. Jacometti & B. Pozzo (Eds.), Le politiche linguistiche delle istituzioni comunitarie dopo l’allargamento. Redazione, traduzione e interpretazione degli atti giuridici comunitari e il loro impatto sull’armonizzazione del diritto europeo (pp. 171–183). Milan: Giuffrè editore.Google Scholar
Gambaro, A.
(2004) A proposito del plurilinguismo legislative europeo. Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto e Procedura Civile, 1, 287–299.Google Scholar
Goffin, R.
(1990) L’Europe en neuf langues: Champ d’affrontements et ferment d’intégration linguistiques. Meta: Translators’ Journal, 35(1), 13–19.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1994) L’eurolecte: Oui, jargon communautaire: non. Meta: Translators’ Journal, 39(4), 636–642.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1997) L’eurolecte: Le langage d’une Europe communautaire en devenir. In Terminologie et Traduction, la Revue des Services Linguistiques des Institutions Européennes, Commissione Europea, 1, 63–73.Google Scholar
Guggeis, M.
(2006) Legislazione multilingue e revisione giuridico linguistica al Consiglio dell’Unione Europa. In V. Jacometti & B. Pozzo (Eds.), Le politiche linguistiche delle istituzioni comunitarie dopo l’allargamento. Redazione, traduzione e interpretazione degli atti giuridici comunitari e il loro impatto sull’armonizzazione del diritto europeo (pp. 159–170). Milan: Giuffrè editore.Google Scholar
(2012) L’influenza dell’Unione europea e le novità introdotte dal Trattato di Lisbona. In B. Pozzo & F. Bambi (Eds.), L’italiano giuridico che cambia (pp. 207–214). Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, A.
(2001) Comparing corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 6(1), 97–133.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koskinen, K.
(2000) Institutional illusions: Translating in the EU Commission. The Translator, 6, 49–65.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mattila, H.
(2006) Comparative jurilinguistics: A discipline in statu nascendi. In B. Pozzo & V. Jacometti (Eds.), Multilingualism and harmonisation of European law (pp. 21–32). The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
(2013) Comparative legal linguistics: Language of law, Latin and modern lingua francas (2nd ed.). Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
McEnery, T., & Wilson, A.
(1996) Corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Milian-Massana, A.
(1995) Le regime linguistique de l’Union européenne: Le regime des institutions et l’incidence du droit communautaire sur la mosaïque linguistique européenne. Rivista di Diritto Europeo, XXXV(3), 485–512.Google Scholar
Mori, L.
(2003) L’euroletto: Genesi e sviluppo dell’italiano comunitario. In A. Valentini, P. Molinelli, P. Cuzzolin & G. Bernini (Eds.), Ecologia linguistica. Atti del XXXVI Convegno internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica italiana (pp. 473–492). Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
(2005) L’italiano lingua della legislazione europea. In B. Turchetta, L. Mori, & E. Ranucci (Eds.), Il mondo in italiano. Varietà ed usi internazionali della lingua (pp. 73–106). Roma: Editori Laterza.Google Scholar
(2008) Gli anni Sessanta e la costruzione dell’identità linguistica europea. Sulla formazione della varietà comunitaria d’italiano. In M. de Pasquale, G. Dotoli, & M. Selvaggio (Eds.), I linguaggi del Sessantotto. Atti del Convegno multidisciplinare (pp. 531–544). Roma: Editrice Apes.Google Scholar
(2011) Linguistic variation in legal Maltese: EU directives compared to national laws. In S. Caruana, R. Fabri & T. Stolz (Eds.), Variation and change: The dynamics of Maltese in space, time and society (Studia Typologica 9) (pp. 109–127). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2018) Observing Eurolects. Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (this volume)CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2018a) Observing Eurolects: The case of Italian. In Mori (Ed.). (this volume).Google Scholar
(2018b) Conclusions: A cross-linguistic over-view on Eurolects. In Mori (Ed.). (this volume).Google Scholar
Nystedt, J.
(1998) L’italiano nei documenti ufficiali della CEE. Il progetto Stoccolma: presentazione e sommario di dati stilolinguistici, statistici e quantitativi (Cahiers de Recherche 10). Stockholm: Arcomedia.Google Scholar
Piehl, A.
(2006) The influence of EU legislation on Finnish legal discourse. In M. Gotti & D. S. Giannoni (Eds.), New Trends in Specialized Discourse Analysis (Linguistic insights. Studies in language and communication 44) (pp. 183–194). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pozzo, B.
(2006) Multilingualism, legal terminology and the problems of harmonising European Private Law. In B. Pozzo & V. Jacometti, Multilingualism and harmonisation of European law (pp. 3–19). The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
Pozzo, B., & Timoteo, M.
(2008) Introduzione. In B. Pozzo & M. Timoteo (Eds.), Europa e linguaggi giuridici (pp. xiii–xxx). Milan: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar
Reinhardt, M.
(2003) Europäische Rechtssprache. Verspätete Randbemerkungen über einen fortgeschrittenen Verfall. NJW, 48, 3449–352.Google Scholar
Robertson, C.
(2013) How the European Union functions in 23 languages (SYNAPS 28). https://​brage​.bibsys​.no​/xmlui​/bitstream​/handle​/11250​/2393842​/Robertson​_28​.pdf​?sequence​=1.
Rossi, P.
(2008) L’impatto del multilinguismo sull’armonizzazione del diritto private europeo. In B. Pozzo & M. Timoteo (Eds.), Europa e linguaggi giuridici (pp. 361–382). Milan: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar
Sacco, R.
(2005) Language and law. In B. Pozzo (Ed.), Ordinary language and legal language. Le lingue del diritto (pp. 1–21). Milan: Giuffrè Editore.Google Scholar
(2008) Dall’interpretazione alla traduzione. In E. Ioriatti Ferrari (Ed.), Interpretazione e traduzione del diritto (pp. 3–11). Padova: CEDAM.Google Scholar
Sandrelli, A.
(2018) Observing Eurolect: The case of English. In Mori (Ed.). (this volume)Google Scholar
Šarčević, S.
(1997) New approach to legal translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
(2015) Language and culture in EU law: A multidisciplinary perspective. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Schade, E.
(2009) Vertragen sich europäische und deutsche Rechtssprache? – Leidensdruck bei der Umsetzung von EU-Recht. Muttersprache, 3, 192–198.Google Scholar
Sosoni, V.
(2004) Aspects of lexical cohesion in EU texts: A critical study of Greek translations and English hybrid texts (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. http://​epubs​.surrey​.ac​.uk​/1044/
Strandvik, I.
(2015) On quality in EU multilingual lawmaking. In S. Šarčević (Ed.), Language and culture in EU law: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 141–165). London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
(2018a) Towards a more structured approach to quality assurance: DGT’s quality journey. In F. Prieto Ramos (Ed.), Institutional translation for international governance: enhancing quality in multilingual legal communication (51–62). London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
(2018b) Preface. Corpus research at the service of multilingual law-making. In Mori (Ed.). (this volume).Google Scholar
Teubert, W.
(Ed.) (2007) Text corpora and multilingual lexicography (Benjamins Current Topics 8). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, E.
(2001) Corpus linguistics at work (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 6). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tomatis, M. S.
(2018) The Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus. Construction and query tools. In Mori (Ed.). (this volume)Google Scholar
Trudgill, P.
(2003) A glossary of sociolinguistics. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Venuti, L.
(1995) The translator’s invisibility. London: Routledge.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, E., Bech, S., & Martínez, J. M.
(2001) Translating for the European Union institutions. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Wodak, R. & Reisigl, M.
(2001) ‪Discourse and discrimination: Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 11 other publications

Biel, Łucja
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 295 ff. Crossref logo
Blini, Lorenzo
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 329 ff. Crossref logo
Dilāns, Gatis
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 243 ff. Crossref logo
Mori, Laura
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 199 ff. Crossref logo
Mori, Laura & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
2021. Mapping Eurolects. Languages in Contrast 21:2 ► pp. 186 ff. Crossref logo
Patin, Stéphane & Fabrizio Megale
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 121 ff. Crossref logo
Pontrandolfo, Gianluca
2021. National and EU judicial phraseology under the magnifying glass: a corpus-assisted analysis of complex prepositions in Spanish. Perspectives 29:2 ► pp. 260 ff. Crossref logo
Portelli, Sergio & Sandro Caruana
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 267 ff. Crossref logo
Prieto Ramos, Fernando & Diego Guzmán
2021. Examining institutional translation through a legal lens. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 33:2 ► pp. 254 ff. Crossref logo
Proia, Fabio
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 147 ff. Crossref logo
Sosonis, Vilelmini, Katia Lida Kermanidis & Sotirios Livas
2018.  In Observing Eurolects [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 86], ► pp. 169 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.