The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis
The popularisation of legal knowledge is a critical issue for equal access to law and justice. Legal discourse has been justly criticised for its obscure terminology and convoluted phrasing, which notably led to the Plain Language Movement in English-speaking countries. In Canada, the concept of Pla...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2024-03-01
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| Series: | Languages |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/3/107 |
| _version_ | 1797240304096509952 |
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| author | Manon Bouyé Christopher Gledhill |
| author_facet | Manon Bouyé Christopher Gledhill |
| author_sort | Manon Bouyé |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The popularisation of legal knowledge is a critical issue for equal access to law and justice. Legal discourse has been justly criticised for its obscure terminology and convoluted phrasing, which notably led to the Plain Language Movement in English-speaking countries. In Canada, the concept of Plain Language has been applied to French since the 1980s due to the official policy of bilingualism, while the concept has only been recently discussed in France. In this paper, we examine the impact of Plain Language rewriting on legal phraseology in French popularisation contexts. The first aim of our study is to see if plain texts published in France contain more traces of legal phraseology than French Canadian texts. Our second objective is to determine if a ‘phraseology of plain language’ can be identified across genres and languages. To do this, we compare two corpora of expert-to-expert legal texts written in French—made up, respectively, of legislative texts published in France and judicial texts published by the Supreme Court of Canada—with two corpora of texts that are claimed to have been written in Plain French Language for a non-expert readership—texts that guide laypersons through legal and administrative processes in France and summaries of decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada. Using n-grams, we extract and discuss the patterns that emerge from the corpora. In particular, our analyses rely on the concept of ‘lexico–grammatical patterns’, defined as the minimal unit of meaningful text made up of recurrent sequences of lexical and grammatical items. We then identify a sample of recurring lexico–grammatical patterns and their discursive functions. |
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-dab50bb6bf7f4e528d7915e48eaf8c3e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2226-471X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T18:05:18Z |
| publishDate | 2024-03-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Languages |
| spelling | doaj.art-dab50bb6bf7f4e528d7915e48eaf8c3e2024-03-27T13:51:00ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2024-03-019310710.3390/languages9030107The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted AnalysisManon Bouyé0Christopher Gledhill1Equipe LEADS, Département d’Enseignement et de Recherche Langues, École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, FranceLaboratoire CLILLAC-ARP, UFR EILA, Faculté Sociétés et Humanités, Université Paris Cité, 75006 Paris, FranceThe popularisation of legal knowledge is a critical issue for equal access to law and justice. Legal discourse has been justly criticised for its obscure terminology and convoluted phrasing, which notably led to the Plain Language Movement in English-speaking countries. In Canada, the concept of Plain Language has been applied to French since the 1980s due to the official policy of bilingualism, while the concept has only been recently discussed in France. In this paper, we examine the impact of Plain Language rewriting on legal phraseology in French popularisation contexts. The first aim of our study is to see if plain texts published in France contain more traces of legal phraseology than French Canadian texts. Our second objective is to determine if a ‘phraseology of plain language’ can be identified across genres and languages. To do this, we compare two corpora of expert-to-expert legal texts written in French—made up, respectively, of legislative texts published in France and judicial texts published by the Supreme Court of Canada—with two corpora of texts that are claimed to have been written in Plain French Language for a non-expert readership—texts that guide laypersons through legal and administrative processes in France and summaries of decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada. Using n-grams, we extract and discuss the patterns that emerge from the corpora. In particular, our analyses rely on the concept of ‘lexico–grammatical patterns’, defined as the minimal unit of meaningful text made up of recurrent sequences of lexical and grammatical items. We then identify a sample of recurring lexico–grammatical patterns and their discursive functions.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/3/107legal Frenchplain Frenchplain languagepopularisationphraseology |
| spellingShingle | Manon Bouyé Christopher Gledhill The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis Languages legal French plain French plain language popularisation phraseology |
| title | The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis |
| title_full | The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis |
| title_fullStr | The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis |
| title_short | The Phraseology of Legal French and Legal Popularisation in France and Canada: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis |
| title_sort | phraseology of legal french and legal popularisation in france and canada a corpus assisted analysis |
| topic | legal French plain French plain language popularisation phraseology |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/3/107 |
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