Exploring the Local Grammar of Evaluation: The Case of Adjectival Patterns in American and Italian Judicial Discourse

• Authors: Gianluca Pontrandolfo , Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Based on a 2-million word bilingual comparable corpus of American and Italian judgments, this paper tests the applicability of a local grammar to study evaluative phraseology in judicial discourse in English and Italian. In particular, the study compares the use of two patterns: v-link + ADJ + that pattern / copula + ADJ + che and v-link + ADJ + to-infinitive pattern / copula + ADJ + verbo all’infinito in the disciplinary genre of criminal judgments delivered by the US Supreme Court and the Italian Corte Suprema di Cassazione. It is argued that these two patterns represent a viable and efficient diagnostic tool for retrieving instances of evaluative language and they represent an ideal starting point and a relevant unit of analysis for a cross-language analysis of evaluation in domainrestricted specialised discourse. Further, the findings provided shed light on important interactions occurring among major interactants involved in the judicial discourse.

Keywords

EN

evaluation; judicial discourse; legal language; local grammar; pattern; phraseology

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 71-91

Dates

published

2014-03-30

Contributors

author

Gianluca Pontrandolfo

• University of Trieste, Italy

author

Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski

• University of Łódź, Poland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rela-2014-0014