SEQUENCE 2
Intitulé de la Séquence 2 : Examples of corpora in ELT/ESP 2.1. Introduction:
2.2. Registers and genres
2.3. Investigating lexis in specific corpora 2.3.1. Legal English
2.3.2. COLE (Corpus Of Legal English) Compétences et objectifs visés par la séquence :
- identify the basic principles of corpora building - Comprehend linguistics terms in use in corpora - process the linguistic items in ELT corpora
Contenu Séquence 2
2.1. Introduction:
[This section of the sequence is devoted to describe several known corpora in ELT/ESP in use over the world. What will be revealed is the philosophy, the procedures these corpora were built on. The lesson will tackle the principles of corpus linguistics in use in classrooms.
Thus, corpora in General English will be paralleled to ESP ones.]
2.2 Registers and genres
[Both Register and Genre give Different perspectives on text varieties. Genres are more
about texts, registers are about linguistic patterns. Register and genre are concepts used to explain the meaning and function of variation between texts. Register corresponds to the context of situation, and genre to the context of culture. The register can be defined as the way a speaker uses in different circumstances by varying the language he writes/speaks.
People behave differently when they are with friends or strangers in a formal or informal setting.]
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“In English language teaching, a GENRE is a text type (spoken or written) which has a
distinctive form and content and which is socio-culturally accepted and recognized as such.
One of the well-known corpus, namely the Brown Corpus (1964) organized its corpus according to certain genres (or text category). They were: Adventure and Western Fiction;
Belles Lettres ; Biography, Essays ; General Fiction ; Humour; Industry Reports,; Learned
; Mystery and Detective Fiction ; Popular Lore ; Press: Editorial ; Press Reviews ; Religion;
Press Reportage ; Romance and Love Story ; Science Fiction; Skills and Hobbies. Other linguists organized the different genres whether they were: “Academic essay. Advertisement.
Book blurb. C.V. Editorial. Encyclopaedia. Interview. Leaflet. Letter of Application. Letter to the Editor. Memo. Memoir . Movie . News report. Newspaper article . Novel. Online forum
. Play. Political speech. Report. Short story. Speech . Survey. Thesis. Travel Guide. Travel Writing. Twitter bio”1.
--- 2.3. Investigating lexis in specific corpora
[In simple terms, Lexis in linguistics refers to the vocabulary and grammar of a language. The etymology of lexis is Greek meaning "word" or "speech . Lexis is all the words of a language and the manner in which those words can be used and combined. Lexis is the set of words phrases and idioms used in text or spoken data. The language in question is either a jargon (specialist terms), a dialect, slang. On the other hand Lexicon denotes the words of a language. A "lexicon" is a dictionary, often of one of the ancient languages.
Lexicon may also refer to a repertoire of terms used in a particular profession, subject or style. It means "dictionary." Lexicology, on the other hand, describes the study of lexis and lexicon.
The dynamic interrelation between corpus and lexis is an important one in corpus linguistics. Several authors have tackled this thorny issue. Oakey in a succinct way describes the process.]
2.3.1. Legal English:
[Legal English is a type of language that can be found in legal writings. It is a formalised variety that has its own vocabulary, syntax, uses and semantics. It can at times be referred to as a ‘sublanguage’ to show that it is different from ordinary English. It is also identified because of a specialized use of certain terms and linguistic patterns. Among linguists, the term legalese is used to describe the specialized discourse of lawyers, laypeople may not always understand.]
2.3.2. COLE (Corpus Of Legal English)
The COLE (Corpus of Legal English) is relatively small when compared to massive general corpora such as the BNC (British National Corpus, said to be the most famous corpus of all, assembling a 100-million-word text corpus) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English 450+ million words). More relevant than size is sampling: diversity and consistency must be present in the data collected. These corpora are originating in native parts of the world and covering a number of subject areas.
As for legal corpora, they contain legislation, legal acts, transcriptions of court decisions, and other kinds of materials related to national or super national law. In the legal register, there are a number of recognized corpora such as the British Law Report Corpus (BLaRC corpus made up of judicial decisions issued by British courts and tribunals. The corpus consists of 8.5 million words of legal texts published in 2008–
2010), The Corpus of Legal English (COLE, 1,694,856 words of academic and
11 Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press, 8 nov. 1990.
11 http://leavingcertenglish.net/2013/10/language-genres/
professional written English), and the British Law English Corpus (BLEC, 6-million- word English corpus of judicial decisions).
The text samples for the COLE Corpus were taken from the Duke Law Journal (spanning the years 2005 to 2009), which is published by Duke University School of Law monthly eight times a year. The Journal publishes general-interest articles, essays, and notes in every branch of law. The texts have been chosen according to: time, medium, mode, origin, topic variety, and size. These texts have been extracted from a wide range of published sources (articles, notes, essays, comments, interviews, lectures etc.). This type of corpus is monolingual, but they can be parallel or multilingual.
