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Part of
Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse
Edited by Teresa Fanego and Paula Rodríguez-Puente
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 91] 2019
► pp. 51–78

Chapter 3
Conditionals in spoken courtroom and parliamentary discourse in English, French, and Spanish

A contrastive analysis

| University of Santiago de Compostela

This chapter explores if-conditionals in English, French and Spanish legal discourse, responding to the scarcity of cross-linguistic studies on conditionals in this genre. In particular, I examine conditionals in courtroom and parliamentary discourse on the basis of corpus evidence from various sources, proposing a cognitive-functional approach that looks at both prototypical and less prototypical uses of conditionality. The findings from the corpus analysis indicate that conditionals in legal discourse are primarily used to express canonical conditions but also function, to a lesser extent, as interpersonal and textual devices. Results also suggest that modal verbs, highly present in these constructions, have different uses depending on the function expressed by the clause.

Keywords: conditionals, if-clauses, legal discourse, ideational, interpersonal
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Conditionals defined
  • 3.Conditionals in legal discourse
  • 4.Corpora and methodology
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Conditionals in the courtroom
      • 5.1.1Frequency
      • 5.1.2Metafunction
      • 5.1.3Semantic type of condition
      • 5.1.4Modal verb in the apodosis
      • 5.1.5Markedness of the apodosis
    • 5.2Conditionals in parliamentary discourse
      • 5.2.1Frequency
      • 5.2.2Metafunctions
      • 5.2.3Semantic type of condition
      • 5.2.4Modal verb in the apodosis
      • 5.2.5Markedness of the apodosis
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.91.03las
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