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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. 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
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