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Observing Eurolects: Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law
Edited by Laura Mori
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86] 2018
► pp. 169–198

Chapter 8
Observing Eurolects

The case of Greek

The present paper presents the findings from the analysis of the Greek corpus of European Union directives spanning the years 1999–2008 (corpus A) and the corpus of the legal instruments used to transpose them into Greek law (corpus B). The aim of the analysis is to verify the existence of a Greek Eurolect, born through translation, and to highlight the differences between this new legal variety and the corresponding Greek legal variety. The findings of the study are particularly interesting as they point to the existence of a Greek Eurolect characterised by Europeisms on a lexical level; morphosyntactic preferences which do not conform to the Greek legal language conventions and norms; an extensive use of the future tense as a result of translating English shall into Greek; and an oscillation between the use of Κatharevousa and Demotiki, that is an H-variety and an L-variety of the Greek language.
Keywords: Greek Eurolect, Greek legal language, EU legal texts, hybridity, multi-method approach
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.EU law and EU legal language
  • 3.Greek law and legal language
  • 4.Corpus design and methodology
    • 4.1Directives: Translation and transposition characteristics
      • 4.1.1The translation of directives
      • 4.1.2The transposition of directives
    • 4.2Corpus A
    • 4.3Corpus B
    • 4.4Corpus analysis: A multi-method approach
    • 4.5Levels of analysis
  • 5.Corpora analysis and findings
    • 5.1Qualitative analysis
      • 5.1.1Interviews
      • 5.1.2Qualitative corpus analysis
    • 5.2Quantitative analysis and triangulation of results
      • 5.2.1Analysis of EU-rooted phenomena
      • 5.2.2Analysis of contact-induced features
      • 5.2.3Analysis of intra-linguistic variability
      • 5.2.4Triangulation of results and discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.86.08sos
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