An investigation into formal and functional characteristics of qualifications in legislative writing and its application to English for academic legal purposes
The present investigation is based on a linguistic analysis of the 'Housing Act 1980' and attempts to examine the role of qualifications in the structuring of the legislative statement. The introductory chapter isolates legislative writing as a ~sub-variety âof legal language and provides an overview of the controversies surrounding the way it is written and the problems it poses to its readers. Chapter two emphasizes the limitations of the available work on the description of language-varieties for the analysis of legislative writing and outlines the approach adopted for the present analysis. This chapter also gives some idea of the information-structuring of legislative provisions and establishes qualification as a key element in their textualisation. The next three chapters offer a detailed account of the ten major qualification-types identified in the corpus, concentrating on the surface form they take, the features of legislative statements they textualize and the syntactic positions to which they are generally assigned in the statement of legislative provisions. The emerging hypotheses in these chapters have often been verified through a specialist reaction from a Parliamentary Counsel, largely responsible
Bhatia, Vijay K.
English studies
An investigation into formal and functional characteristics of qualifications in legislative writing and its application to English for academic legal purposes. The present investigation is based on a linguistic analysis of the 'Housing Act 1980' and attempts to examine the role of qualifications in the structuring of the legislative statement. The introductory chapter isolates legislative writing as a ~sub-variety âof legal language and provides an overview of the controversies surrounding the way it is written and the problems it poses to its readers. Chapter two emphasizes the limitations of the available work on the description of language-varieties for the analysis of legislative writing and outlines the approach adopted for the present analysis. This chapter also gives some idea of the information-structuring of legislative provisions and establishes qualification as a key element in their textualisation. The next three chapters offer a detailed account of the ten major qualification-types identified in the corpus, concentrating on the surface form they take, the features of legislative statements they textualize and the syntactic positions to which they are generally assigned in the statement of legislative provisions. The emerging hypotheses in these chapters have often been verified through a specialist reaction from a Parliamentary Counsel, largely responsible
investigation formal_functional characteristic qualification legislative write application english_academic legal purpose present_investigation base linguistic_analysis housing act attempt examine_role qualification structure legislative statement introductory legislative write sub variety legal language provide_overview controversy surround way write problem_pose reader emphasizes limitation available work description language varieties analysis legislative writing outline adopt present_analysis also_give idea information structuring legislative provision establishes qualification key_element next_three offer_detailed account major qualification types identify corpus concentrate surface_form take feature legislative statement syntactic position generally assign statement legislative provision emerge hypothesis often verify specialist reaction parliamentary counsel largely_responsible