Genre analysis has become firmly established as one of the most popular frameworks for the study of specialized genres in academic, professional and institutional as well as other workplace contexts. In recent years, genre theory has also developed in the direction of a more comprehensive and powerful multi-dimensional and multi-perspectived framework to examine not only the text but also the context in a much more meaningful manner than had ever been done earlier. The theoretical perspectives and the individual case studies of this volume testify to the wide range of methodological tools made available by genre theory, enabling researchers to handle problems relating to the description of variations in language use. Moreover, the following relevant issues are addressed: how are specialized genres constructed, interpreted and exploited in the achievement of specific goals in highly specialized contexts?

This interdisciplinary collection with contributions in English and French explores how the various disciplines of law and linguistics appreciate and work towards improving the nature of clarity and obscurity in legal language. For the first time, it brings together legal academics and practitioners, jurilinguists and linguists from the common law and civil law with the specific aim to understand the complex nature, practice and tools of clarity and obscurity in legal drafting. Topics addressed include how the Clarity framework has been put into practice through the use of plainer language, better comprehensibility, readability and access to legal or administrative texts. In an attempt to reflect the more recent development of the Clarity-Obscurity debate, the editors have also focused on the use of specific instruments to respond to the problems raised by obscurity to improve clarity. Cette collection interdisciplinaire offrant des contributions en anglais et en français, explore comment les diverses disciplines du droit et de la linguistique appréhendent et visent à perfectionner la nature de la clarté et de l'opacité du discours juridique. Cet ouvrage rassemblant pour la première fois, des universitaires et professionnels du droit, des jurilinguistes et linguistes de la common law and et du droit civil, propose de découvrir la nature complexe, les pratiques et outils de la clarté et de l'opacité utilisés en rédaction juridique. Les questions abordées examinent la mise en pratique de la clarté juridique au travers de l'utilisation de la langue courante, une meilleure lisibilité, compréhensibilité et accès aux textes juridiques et administratifs. Dans le but de refléter l'actualité du débat Clarté-Opacité du discours juridique, les éditrices se sont également concentrées sur l'utilisation des outils et méthodes les plus récents et utilisés pour résoudre les difficultés soulevées par l'opacité des langues du droit et ainsi améliorer la transparence du discours juridique.

Featuring a collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by two leading scholars, this Handbook surveys the key research findings in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). • Provides a state-of-the-art overview of the origins and evolution, current research, and future directions in ESP • Features newly-commissioned contributions from a global team of leading scholars • Explores the history of ESP and current areas of research, including speaking, reading, writing, technology, and business, legal, and medical English • Considers perspectives on ESP research such as genre, intercultural rhetoric, multimodality, English as a lingua franca and ethnography

This volume contributes to the latest studies in legal discourse studies by presenting a descriptive and interpretive analysis of English legal genres used in academic and professional writing contexts. The results of corpora-driven data are discussed through (meta)discourse, genre and other theoretical perspectives, and offer insights into the ways the writers' discursive practices and meanings shape their membership of the legal community and discipline. The volume attempts to show these id ...

In the first decade of the twenty first century, Corpus Linguistics as a methodology had already proved to be an impeccable one, and is probably the most elaborate way to approach empirical studies on languages. At present this seems to be essential to formulate general theories about most aspects of languages in different stages of their evolution. Corpora and Corpus Linguistics have been present in research for a reasonably long time now. The evolution of the discipline has been assessed by conferences, new publications and all sorts of events related to the field. Therefore, it seems most convenient to offer an outline of the advances made in the past decade as well as to try and make a guess as for what is yet to come. The editors have used their experience to collect a volume that certainly will have something to offer to the scientific community. Their work as compilers of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing has made them familiar with corpus-compilation and the time-consuming tasks it entails. As users of this and other corpora, they can also appreciate the tools modern technology offers researchers and what the possibilities of exploitation are. In this way, the selection of papers contained in this volume address a wide range of scholars interested in the discipline, both corpus compilers and users.

Given current science-related crises facing the world such as climate change, the targeting and manipulation of DNA, GMO foods, and vaccine denial, the way in which we communicate science matters is vital for current and future generations of scientists and publics. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication scrutinizes what we value, prioritize, and grapple with in science as highlighted by the rhetorical choices of scientists, students, educators, science gatekeepers, and lay commentators. Drawing on contributions from leading thinkers in the field, this volume explores some of the most pressing questions in this growing field of study, including: How do issues such as ethics, gender, race, shifts in the publishing landscape, and English as the lingua franca of science influence scientific communication practices? How have scientific genres evolved and adapted to current research and societal needs? How have scientific visuals developed in response to technological advances and communication needs? How is scientific communication taught to a variety of audiences? Offering a critical look at the complex relationships that characterize current scientific communication practices in academia, industry, government, and elsewhere, this Handbook will be essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals involved in the study, practice, and teaching of scientific, medical, and technical communication.

Public information messages are an important means of state-citizen communication in today's societies. Using this genre, citizens are directed to “never ever drink and drive”, to “slow down” and to “learn to say no”. Yet, this book presents the first in-depth analysis of public information messages from a linguistic perspective, and indeed also from a cross-cultural perspective. Specifically, the study, adopting genre analysis, contrasts a corpus of state-run national public information campaigns in Germany and Ireland. A taxonomy of moves is developed inductively and the interactional features of the genre are analysed and related to the context of use. The comprehensive discussion of theoretical and methodological issues, the in-depth analysis and the extensive bibliography make this book of interest to researchers and students in (contrastive) discourse analysis, (cross-cultural) pragmatics, contrastive rhetoric, advertising, social psychology, mass communication and media studies. Copy-writers will also profit from the insights gained, particularly within the context of an increase in Europe-wide public information campaigns.

This volume provides descriptive and interpretive insights into the ‘living’ usage of language and other semiotic modes in building and performing the law across academic, professional and institutional contexts, where issues arise from the meaning and function of legal texts, discourse and genre in constituting and enabling conventions, albeit dynamically, and account for the socially and (inter)culturally influenced forms of discursive actions and practices. The twenty contributions included here weave significant contexts and situations for legal discourse and practice into a tight thread, and justify selected topic areas through a variety of approaches, frameworks, methodologies, and procedures. As such, this publication is multidimensional and multiperspectival in its design and implementation of key issues confronting discursive actions and practices of the law, and provides an invaluable resource for academics in a wider range of disciplines, including linguistics, applied linguistics and communication studies. It will also be of interest to students of interdisciplinary discourse analysis.

The development from a synthetic to an analytic language is one of the most important topics in English historical syntax. This development is reflected in the gradual decrease of case-forms and the replacement of their functions with equivalent prepositional constructions. Focussing on the Old English period, when case-forms and prepositional constructions overlapped in various functions, this book aims to answer an unresolved question: was there a significant change in the use of case-forms and, alternatively, in the use of prepositions plus case-forms in contexts where both types were possible? The author makes a statistical comparison between prose texts written in the early Old English period and texts of the later Old English period; she also takes into account stylistic features of individual texts. Thus, this book addresses this Old English syntactic issue both from a historical and a stylistic perspective and shows the stages of development during the Old English period.

The present is a time of major change in the world of higher education. Conceptions of knowledge and learning as well as course provision are being powerfully altered by current socio-political agendas, constantly evolving technology, demographic developments. The question of identity and its construction in narrative are central to reflection on these issues. Indeed the construction of multimodal/hybridized narratives involves discoursal processes where perceptions of culture and identity, attitudinal and evaluative stances are represented, negotiated, marginalized, transformed. This volume presents a rich variety of perspectives on verbal/visual narrative texts in higher education coming from Europe, North America, South Africa, China and Australia. It includes case studies and original research from a wide spectrum of disciplinary domains (political science, law, medicine, biology, ICT, teacher education) set in a range of different education contexts (online communities and classrooms; native-speaker/nonnative-speaker, intercultural and multilingual/multiethnic milieus).