Sygnalizowanie miejsc spornych w dyskursie sądowym. Analiza korpusowa wybranych rzeczowników występujących w orzeczeniach Sądu Najwyższego Stanów Zjednoczonych oraz Trybunału Konstytucyjnego w Polsce

This paper adopts a comparative, corpus-based perspective to examine the language of judicial justification. Based on substantial corpus data, the study explores one of the linguistics resources, i.e. head nouns (e.g. assumption, belief, notion, etc.) followed by a nominal complement in the form of that-clause in two comparable legal settings: the opinions given in the United States Supreme Court and the judgements handed down by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. The findings corroborate the results of previous research which shows that nouns found in this pattern are used to perform various discourse functions but evaluation plays a central role in judicial writing and these nouns are used to signal sites of contentions. The study reveals the general similarity between the two sets of data suggesting that American and Polish judicial writing is underpinned by essentially the same epistemological assumptions. Yet, there are some differences in the way the nouns behave phraseologically. Polish nouns tend to show less collocational variation and they are found performing fewer discourse functions. Niniejszy artykuł ukazuje próbę wykorzystania metodologii korpusowej w celu badania języka uzasadnien decyzji stosowania prawa. Przedmiotem analizy jest użycie grupy rzeczowników takich jak przypuszczenie, pogląd czy sugestia w konstrukcji przed spójnikiem that, a więc kontrolujących zdania podrzędne dopełnieniowe. Celem badania jest zbadanie funkcji jakie rzeczowniki w tej konstrukcji pełnią w dyskursie uzasadnień sądowych. Przyjęta hipoteza zakładała, że jedną z funkcji może być wartościowanie. Przedstawione w artykule wyniki potwierdzają, że sędziowie, zarówno amerykańscy jak i polscy, posługują się chętnie tego typu wyrażeniami w celu dokonania oceny argumentów zgłoszonych przez sędziów rozpatrujących sprawę w niższej instancji, strony procesowe, jak również innych sędziów spośród składu orzekającego. Bliższa analiza ukazuje również, iż rzeczowniki użyte w uzasadnieniach Trybunału Konstytucyjnego charakteryzują się mniejszym zróżnicowaniem kolokacyjnym oraz pełnią mniej funkcji w dyskursie niż ich angielskie odpowiedniki. 

Strategies of Justification in Resolving Conflicts of Values and Interests. A Comparative Analysis of Constitutional Argumentation in Cases of Animal Sacrifice

Understood as reasons and rationale given by courts in rendering their decisions (DiMatteo 2015; Gudowski 2015), justification is of great importance when resolving morally sensitive issues. In such cases, judges are tasked with finding solutions to fundamental conflicts of incommensurable constitutional principles, which are inherently open-ended, general and in need of interpretation. Constitutional courts rely on different models of constitutional review depending on a given legal system and culture. However, their overarching goal is to consider ways of resolving conflicts and their justifications arising from a clash between constitutionally protected rights and interests and other values deemed worthy of protection by legislatures. The question addressed in this paper is how a constitutional court can resolve conflicts and communicate motives behind its decision in morally sensitive issues and how evaluative language is instrumental in achieving this strategic goal. Two cases are compared in which judges resolve a conflict between freedom to exercise religion and the animal welfare. In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, the US Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of animal sacrifice for religious purposes. In Poland, the Constitutional Tribunal in its decision (K52/13) ruled for the admissibility of ritual slaughter. Adopting the methodology of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), this paper demonstrates that while the argumentation in the Polish decision is heavily axiological, with Polish judges using value-based language to engage in fundamental values and principles, the US Supreme Court judges avoid broad, abstract reasoning by resting the argumentation on low-level and medium-level principles (Sunstein 2018) translated into concrete rules and standards

Jak twórczo kształcić humanistów dla potrzeb rynku pracy? Studium przypadku: kierunek lingwistyka dla biznesu na Uniwersytecie Łódzkim

Artykuł dotyczy problematyki zatrudnialności w kontekście utworzonego w 2013 r. nowego kierunku studiów ‒ lingwistyki dla biznesu. Opisano w nim proces tworzenia kierunku oraz przedstawiono założenia oraz charakterystykę programu studiów. Za jeden z kluczowych czynników uznano nie tylko współpracę dwu jednostek uniwersyteckich (Wydziału Filologicznego oraz Wydziału Zarządzania), lecz także współpracę z bezpośrednim otoczeniem biznesowym, które w opisywanym przypadku stanowią trzy firmy operujące w regionie łódzkim: Infosys, Fujitsu oraz Hewlett Packard. Efektem tej współpracy jest przygotowanie przyszłych pracowników odpowiadających na zapotrzebowanie rynku pracy oraz wspólne tworzenie nowych kierunków studiów, programów kształcenia oraz sylabusów zajęć dydaktycznych, prowadzonych przez pracowników uniwersyteckich, a także przedstawicieli lub pracowników firm działających na rynku pracy. Artykuł wskazuje na potrzebę połączenia podejścia interdyscyplinarnego (nauki humanistyczne, społeczne, zarządzanie) z autentycznymi i weryfikowanymi potrzebami regionalnego rynku pracy

Marriage, Liberty and Constitution: a Corpusassisted Study of Value-Laden Words in Legal Argumentation

This paper investigates the interplay between judicial argumentation and evaluative or emotive language identified in two US Supreme Court landmark cases on the right of same-sex couples to marry. The analysis of both majority and dissenting opinions leads to two main observations. First, marriage and liberty are indeed emotive words and they represent two major sites of contention between the concurring and dissenting judges. Second, there are important differences within the argumentative strategies employed by the judges. While (re)defining the concepts remains the major argumentative goal for both types of opinion, the majority opinions tacitly integrate the redefined concept of marriage into their argumentation. It is the dissenting opinions that explicitly raise the issue of (re)definition in order to defend and retain the original sense of marriage

"You Don't Have Time to Think Up There. If You Think You're Dead" – A Corpus-assisted Study of Discursive Strategies to Engage Readers in Corporate Blogs

This study investigates recurrent language resources employed in corporate blogs to connect with readers and (to a lesser extent) express authorial positions. It is based on the premise that constructing identity and enhancing image underpins most, if not all, corporate discourse and blogs are no exception. Based on a corpus of 500 different posts (totalling 318,296 words) from the Business Process Outsourcing and Information Technology sectors, we use standard Corpus Linguistics (Partington et al. 2013) techniques (keywords, cluster analysis, concordancing) to identify linguistic features associated with the expression of engagement: reader pronouns and their co-occurrence with selected modal verbs, questions, adverbs marking shared knowledge and directives. These are then interpreted in in terms of a model of textual interactions proposed in Hyland (2005). We argue that the communication found in this relatively new and underresearched genre is essentially effected one-way establishing a pseudo-dialogue, with virtually no or very low level of interactivity between blog writers and blog readers

Exploring the Local Grammar of Evaluation: The Case of Adjectival Patterns in American and Italian Judicial Discourse

Based on a 2-million word bilingual comparable corpus of American and Italian judgments, this paper tests the applicability of a local grammar to study evaluative phraseology in judicial discourse in English and Italian. In particular, the study compares the use of two patterns: v-link + ADJ + that pattern / copula + ADJ + che and v-link + ADJ + to-infinitive pattern / copula + ADJ + verbo all’infinito in the disciplinary genre of criminal judgments delivered by the US Supreme Court and the Italian Corte Suprema di Cassazione. It is argued that these two patterns represent a viable and efficient diagnostic tool for retrieving instances of evaluative language and they represent an ideal starting point and a relevant unit of analysis for a cross-language analysis of evaluation in domainrestricted specialised discourse. Further, the findings provided shed light on important interactions occurring among major interactants involved in the judicial discourse

A genre-based view on separate opinion and its justification. An exploratory study of the Constitutional Tribunal opinions

Surprisingly, there has been very little research into separate opinions in the legal linguistics literature. Very scarce attention has been paid to the linguistic and communicative aspects of how judges frame their disagreement. This chapter is one of the first attempts to examine the institution of votum separatum or separate opinion in the institutional context of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. It starts with an overview of the concept, its functions and the range of recipients. This is then followed by an examination of its form and structure. The study demonstrates how judges tend to employ highly formulaic expressions to signal their disagreement despite the absence of clear guidelines that would prescribe ways in which their stance should be communicated. In addition, the analysis shows that declaring votum separatum and providing its justification are two different acts, not only legally but also linguistically, especially in terms of their formulaicity. Finally, directions for future research are outlined

Values and Valuations in Judicial Discourse. A Corpus-Assisted Study of (Dis)Respect in US Supreme Court Decisions on Same-Sex Marriage

This paper investigates the role of (DIS)RESPECT a value premise in two landmark civil rights cases given by the United States Supreme Court. It adopts a corpus-assisted approach whereby a keyword analysis and the analysis of key semantic domains are used to identify potential values relied upon by judges in their justifications. The two categories of NO RESPECT and RESPECTED have been selected and examined as one domain of (DIS)RESPECT. (DIS)RESPECT turns out to be the only value marked by strong evaluative polarity and it is found in the majority, as well as in dissenting opinions. The analysis shows how the notion of (DIS)RESPECT has been integrated into the arguments of judges and it highlights the central importance of values and the related evaluative language for legal argumentation