Cover not available
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. 123–146

Chapter 6
“It is not just a fact that the law requires this, but it is a reasonable fact”

Using the Noun that-pattern to explore stance construction in legal writing

 | University of Łódź
This chapter investigates the construction of stance through nouns in two legal genres: academic journals and judicial opinions. The study builds on previous research into stance construal in judicial discourse which focuses on nouns followed by a that-clause complement. Nouns found in this pattern indicate the epistemic status of the proposition expressed in the that-clause and they are used to evaluate the reliability of propositions contained in the that-clause (e.g., the assumption that … is incorrect). The present analysis of the Noun that-pattern highlights its dependence on both genre- and discipline-specific factors. It reveals disciplinary similarities in the choice of noun and the dominance of the authority-building function in both legal academic enquiry and judicial argumentation. Genre-oriented differences are found, for example, in the higher frequencies in judicial corpora of ‘certainty’ nouns (e.g., fact) and ‘communication’ nouns (e.g., argument).
Keywords: academic writing, evaluation, judicial argumentation, stance, intra-disciplinary variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The concepts of evaluation and stance in legal discourse
  • 3.Stance, status and the noun that-pattern
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Overview of nouns + that-clause in the three corpora
      • 5.1.1Epistemic nouns expressing certainty
        • 5.1.1.1Fact
        • 5.1.1.2Conclusion
      • 5.1.2Epistemic nouns indicating likelihood
  • 6.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.91.06goz
References (35)
References
Alba-Juez, Laura & Thompson, Geoff. 2014. The many faces of evaluation. In Evaluation in Context, Geoff Thompson & Laura Alba-Juez (eds), 3–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 2006. University Language. A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Breeze, Ruth. 2011. Disciplinary values in legal discourse: A corpus-based study. Ibérica 21: 93–116.Google Scholar
. 2018. Giving voice to the law. Speech act verbs in legal academic writing. In Goźdź-Roszkowski & Pontrandolfo (eds), 221–239.Google Scholar
Breeze, Ruth, Gotti, Maurizio & Sancho-Guinda Carmen (eds). 2014. Interpersonality in Legal Genres. Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DiMatteo, Larry. 2015. Legal justification in Anglo-American Common Law. In Uzasadnienia decyzji stosowania prawa (Justifications in decision-making process), Iwona Rzucidło-Grochowska & Mateusz Grochowski (eds), 512–524. Warsaw: Wolters Kluwer.Google Scholar
Du Bois, John. 2007. The stance triangle. In Englebretson, Robert. (ed), 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Englebretson, Robert. (ed). 2007. Stancetaking in Discourse. Subjectivity, Evaluation Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 164]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finegan, Edward. 2010. Corpus linguistic approaches to ‘Legal language’: adverbial expression of attitude and emphasis in Supreme Court opinions. In The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Malcolm Coulthard & Alison Johnson (eds), 65–77. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanisław. 2011. Patterns of Linguistic Variation in American Legal English. A Corpus-based Study. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018a. Facts in law. A comparative study of fact that and its phraseologies in American and Polish judicial discourse. In Goźdź-Roszkowski & Pontrandolfo (eds), 143–159.Google Scholar
. 2018b. Between corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches to textual recurrence. Exploring semantic sequences in judicial discourse. In Patterns in Text: Corpus-driven Methods and Applications [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 82], Joanna Kopaczyk & Jukka Tyrkko (eds),131–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanisław & Hunston, Susan. 2016. Corpora and beyond – investigating evaluation in discourse: Introduction to the Special Issue on Corpus Approaches to Evaluation . Corpora 11(2): 131–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanisław & Pontrandolfo, Gianluca. 2013. Evaluative patterns in judicial discourse: A corpus-based phraseological perspective on American and Italian criminal judgments. International Journal of Law, Language and Discourse 13(2): 9–69.Google Scholar
. 2014. Facing the facts: Evaluative patterns in English and Italian judicial language. In Language and Law in Professional Discourse. Issues and Perspectives, Vijay Bhatia, Guliana Garzone & Rita Salvi (eds) 10–28. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
(eds). 2018. Phraseology in Legal and Institutional Settings. A Corpus-based Interdisciplinary Perspective. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hafner, Christoph A. 2014. Stance in a professional legal genre. The barrister’s opinion. In Breeze, Gotti & Sancho-Guinda (eds), 137–160.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Matthiessen, Christian. 2004 [1985]. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edn. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Heffer, Chris. 2007. Judgement in court: Evaluating participants in courtroom discourse. In Language and the Law: International Outlooks, Krzysztof Kredens & Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski (eds), 45–179. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 2011. Corpus Approaches to Evaluation. Phraseology and Evaluative Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan & Francis, Gill. 2000. Pattern Grammar. A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 4]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jiang, Feng & Hyland, Ken. 2015. ‘The fact that’: Stance nouns in disciplinary writing. Discourse Studies 17(5): 529–550. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klinck, Dennis R. 1992. The Word of the Law: Approaches to Legal Discourse. Ottawa: Carleton University Press.Google Scholar
Marín Pérez, María José & Rea Rizzo, Camino. 2012. Structure and design of the British Law Report Corpus (BLRC): A legal corpus of judicial decisions from the UK. Journal of English Studies 10: 131–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazzi, Davide. 2007. The rhetoric of judicial texts: The interplay of reported argumentation and the judge’s argumentative voice. In Discourse, Ideology and Specialized Communication, Giuliana Garzone & Srikant Sarangi (eds), 379–399. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2008. “I first have to decide whether there were any notes in the first place. I consider that there probably were”: Adverbials of stance in equity judges’ argumentation. Textus 21: 505–522.Google Scholar
. 2010. “This argument fails for two reasons…” A linguistic analysis of judicial evaluation strategies in US Supreme Court Judgments. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 23(4): 373–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “The words are plain and clear…”: On interpersonal positioning in the discourse of judicial interpretation. In Breeze, Gotti & Sancho-Guinda (eds), 39–62.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth. 2007. The Language of Law School: Learning to Think Like a Lawyer. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pounds, Gabrina. 2013. Genre- and culture-specific aspects of evaluation: Insights from the contrastive analysis of English and Italian online property advertising. In Contrastive Discourse Analysis. Functional and Corpus Perspectives, Maite Taboada, Susana Doval Suárez & Elsa González Álvarez (eds), 240–261. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Sala, Michele. 2014. Interpersonal and interactional markers in legal research articles. In Breeze, Gotti & Sancho-Guinda (eds), 113–136.Google Scholar
Sancho-Guinda, Carmen, Gotti, Maurizio & Breeze, Ruth. 2014. Framing interpersonality in law texts. In Breeze, Gotti & Sancho-Guinda (eds), 9–35.Google Scholar
Solan, Lawrence. 1993. The Language of Judges. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szczyrbak, Magdalena. 2014. Stancetaking strategies in judicial discourse: Evidence from US Supreme Court opinions. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 131: 1–30.Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Daniel, Florence Oluwaseyi
2024.  That-complement clauses signalling stance in Nigerian Supreme Court lead judgements: a corpus-based study. International Journal of Legal Discourse 9:1 ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Li, Jian & Zhanglei Ye
2024. Stance expressions in legal academic discourse: A corpus-based analysis of legal journals. International Journal of Legal Discourse DOI logo
Hiltunen, Turo
2022. Towards a local grammar of stance expression in Late Modern English medical writing. In Corpus Pragmatic Studies on the History of Medical Discourse [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 330], ► pp. 127 ff. DOI logo
Daniel, Florence Oluwaseyi & Foluke Olayinka Unuabonah
2021. Stance and engagement in selected Nigerian Supreme Court judgments. English Text Construction 14:2 ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 december 2024. 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.