What is it about?

This article uses computational techniques to find out more about the mysterious small "bundles" of words that occur repeatedly in a particular genre or area of language. It consists of an in depth study of four areas of legal language: academic papers, case law (opinions and judgements), documents (contracts, agreements) and legislation. In each case, the most frequently repeated combinations of words are identified, and their roles in the text are examined.

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Why is it important?

This paper adds to our knowledge of how specialised genres and registers are built up, and what it means to talk about the "texture" of a text.

Perspectives

This article adds to our understanding of genres in general, and legal genres in particular. It builds on the foundations laid by Biber and others, who studied lexical bundles across many genres and settings. By providing an in-depth examination of the bundles found in one area, it sheds light on nature of specialised language.

Dr Ruth Breeze
Universidad de Navarra

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This page is a summary of: Lexical bundles across four legal genres, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, September 2013, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/ijcl.18.2.03bre.
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