Working towards a Discipline‐Specific Vocabulary Core (DSVC) for postgraduate International Law

Jenny Kemp     jenny.kemp@le.ac.uk

TALC 2018 @ University of Cambridge, July 19th 2018

reading

needs of PG Law (LLM) students

vocabulary

socio‐legal context

Northcott (2008, 2009); Deutch (2003) 

Northcott (2009) 

Carver (1994), Schoonen et al (1998), Nassaji 2003)

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Carr & Stone (2014, p.159)

VocabProfiler: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/Kemp TaLC 2018

All on Gardner and Davies’ (2014) New Academic Vocabulary List (AVL), but with a specific meaning in Law

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Research Questions1. What specialist lexis (single words, collocations, 

multi‐word units) do postgraduate International Law students need for reading?

2. What text coverage does this Discipline‐Specific Vocabulary Core (DSVC) provide?

3. When students begin their LLM course, do they know this DSVC?

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Corpus linguistics

English for Academic Purposes

Data Driven Learning (DDL)

Prof. Vijay BhatiaLegal English

forensic linguisticsOn the use of corpora in the analysis of forensic textsCoulthard, Malcolm. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, 2/18/2013, Vol.1(1), pp.27‐43 

Legal translation

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The DSVC International Law Corpus

LLM reading texts

Corpus (c.2m words)

Discipline‐Specific Vocabulary Core

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written legal texts

Prescriptive

treatiesagreementsconventionsactsdirectivesregulationscodes of practice(contracts, wills)

Hybrid

Descriptivetextbooksmonographsedited volumesjournal articlespractitioner textscommission reportsweb articles and summariescase summariescase digestscase commentscommentaries(essays, dissertations, theses)

cases + appealspanel reportstribunal reportscourt proceedingsadvisory opinions(statements, briefs, advice)

Communicative function

(My categories develop the work of: Bhatia, 1983; Šarčević, 1997; Williams, 2007; Gozdz‐Roszkowski 2013)Kemp TaLC 2018

function no. of textsPrescriptive 66Hybrid 47Descriptive 288

401

date no. of textspre‐1980 261980‐1999 352000‐2019 340

401

tokens 1,950,302words 35, 806lemma+POS (lempos) 29,581

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The DSVC International Law Corpus12 domains:1. Company Law2. Intellectual Property &Internet Law

3. Civil & Commercial ADR4. Sale & Carriage of Goods, Marine Insurance, & Shipping

5. World Trade and Investment6. Banking & Finance7. Conflict of Laws

8. EU Constitutional &Administrative Law 

9. EU Substantive Law10. Public International Law11. Armed Conflict &

International Criminal Justice

12. International Human Rights Law

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Survey of modules in LLM programmes    in 21 UK universities (2014/5)

modules

universities

banking law human rights

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Reading lists:titles + topics and themes

5000-word samples

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expert judgments on corpus content

1. In your opinion, does the list reflect examples of the topics, themes and principles that tend to be covered in this domain?

2. Is there any item which seems out of place? (If so, which item and why?)

3. Is there a topic/theme/principle which you believe is widely taught, but which is not covered here?

4. Is there a particular text which you believe is usually required reading, but which is not covered here?

5. Do the proportions of the different genres correspond approximately to what you would expect an LLM student to read? 

16 experts5 institutionsKemp TaLC 2018

The DSVC International Law Corpus

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Top 30 noun lemmas in the DSVC International Law (by raw freq)

1 law 115212 court 79753 article 74084 state 73415 right 55556 case 53597 party 52048 member 47289 company 384910 rule 373511 agreement 354812 states 311913 provision 295714 contract 281315 convention 2807

16 act 272817 treaty 250918 principle 245719 country 234020 system 232721 person 231022 jurisdiction 224823 time 223324 measure 218125 eu 215126 market 214327 decision 211928 order 203629 obligation 203630 part 2010

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1 bank 1,1842 financial 8303 market 5944 credit 4795 law 4756 system 3687 regulation 3628 service 3619 investment 35110 provide 34311 risk 33312 banking 33013 institution 32714 security 32615 firm 32516 consumer 30117 member 29918 rule 28519 act 27920 activity 278

Banking & Finance

Raw freq.

Pilot data (30 texts)range 8/30

Top content words

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provideKemp TaLC 2018

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY‐NC‐SA

In the light of

See discussion in Kemp 2018

Genre = cases

use by copying and use of

use of  worksregistration and use of

the terms and conditions of the  use of  the work or other subject matterin connection with any  use of electronic communications

must be use as  a trade markuse of  a trade mark

the  use made  of the workto make use of  electronic communicationswhere  use is made of

fair useof  public non‐commercial useagainst  unfair commercial use

legitimate usefor  private  usewhere the  use is  authorised  by

unauthorised  use ofpermitted to  usethe right to  useintending to  use itinhibit the  use of

the use of the word 'could use

Use, as a concept, is important in IP/Internet Law at PG level.

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1 D   the management and/or controlling shareholder , which is essentially the st2 D   flow ownership by the controlling shareholder  mitigates this incentive for3 D   in recent years, particularly as  shareholder  activism has developed and b4 D   investors. More recent examples of  shareholder  activism include a revolt by5 D   is not to suggest that  shareholder  activism is always a good 6 D  rategic and operational matters require shareholder  approval, company election p7 D   board (at least without formal  shareholder  approval)   from taking any 8 D   to raise loan capital and  shareholder  approval is not normally req9 D orward financing proposals that require shareholder  approval, they will know tha10 D   which takes account of minority shareholder  interests and does not unfa11 D   the company is to maximise shareholder  interests. The second answer12 D   striking the right balance between  shareholder  primacy and stakeholder mana13 D mpany, including the shareholders. The  shareholder  primacy and stakeholder theo14 D  . Accordingly, Berle was not advocating  shareholder  primacy as we understand it 15 D   for approval and where a  shareholder  proposal has been made pursu16 D   have the right to submit  shareholder  proposals to a vote. If 17 D  ublicising underperformance and filing  shareholder  proposals to bring about imp18 D   company elections; nor usually can  shareholder  resolutions bind the board, 19 D   can be supplemented by certain  shareholder  resolutions or agreements. S20 D   on the law relating to  shareholder  resolutions, proxies and cor23 D those concerned with transparency and  shareholder  rights, also single out quot24 D   a fight on the Draft  Shareholder  Rights Directive is going on25 D   of US accounting standards and  shareholder  rights' protection; and the 26 D considerations and because it enhances  shareholder  value. The argument seems to27 D   business, that end is maximising shareholder  value, which depends on busi28 D   with the obligation to maximize shareholder  value. During the same p29 D   as a way of maximizing shareholder  returns? The basic problem i30 D   with B as a minority shareholder,   a position which may prove31 D   and thus becoming a minority shareholder  may be such a costly 32 D   the behest of a minority shareholder.   b Practical impediments to33 D existence of different and incompatible  shareholder  voting guidelines (5.8). 36 34 D   holding periods for stock; increased  shareholder  voting influence in relation35 D  . At the same time, though,  shareholder  voting probably only operate

shareholder

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Civil & Commercial ADR

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Keywords

Ref corpus: EnTenTen13

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• The vocabulary that is relevant for PG Law students crosses frequency boundaries;

• It also stretches across word boundaries;• So a keyword list of single words is not enough.

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Discipline Specific Vocabulary Core (DSVC)

collocations

multiword units

single words(high frequency)

single words (specific) proper nouns

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Multiword units

collocations

Salient items in each domain subcorpus

Salient items in each communicative function subcorpus

Salient items in the whole corpus

Single words

Single wordsProper nouns

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Methodologically sound

Pedagogically useful

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How can we use this in the classroom?

• Observe• Highlight• Extract• Use 

1. corpus‐informed teaching

2. guided awareness‐raising activities

3. hands‐on learner trainingPreshous & Kemp (2017)

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The following concordance lines are all taken from a small purpose‐built corpus of law reports from your reading lists. 

• Study the examples in A‐C and work out the meaning(s) of the central phrase. 

• Highlight useful patterns.

Remember that you

are looking for

patterns, so it must

occur at least twice

to be useful.

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• Observe• Highlight• Extract• Use 

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guided & freer practice • Observe• Highlight• Extract• Use

Gapfil examples from BAWE and byu‐bncKemp TaLC 2018

"very useful for our future studies"/ “AntConc and the 

knowledge [of corpora] was and is really useful"

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ReferencesBhatia, V., 1983. An Applied Discourse Analysis of English Legislative Writing, Birmingham: University of Aston.Gozdz-Roszkowski, S., 2013. Exploring near-synonymous terms in legal language. A corpus-based, phraseological perspective. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series –Themes in Translation Studies, 0(12).Hyland, K. and Tse, P. 2007. Is there an "academic vocabulary"? TESOL Quarterly, 41(2), 235-253.Kemp, J. Forthcoming, 2018. ‘A rosy-fingered dawn for legal education? Insights from a corpus linguistic perspective on text’. Nottingham Law Journal, 27(2). Marín, M.J. and Rea, C. 2011. Design and compilation of a legal English corpus based on UK law reports: the process of making decisions. In Carrió Pastor and M. L. y Candel Mora, M. A. Las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones: Presente y futuro en el análisis de córpora. Actas del III Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus. Valencia: Universitat Politècnica de València, 101-110. Northcott, J. 2009. Teaching legal English: contexts and cases. In: D. Belcher, ed. English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice. Ann Arbor: University of Michegan Press, 165-185.Preshous, A. and Kemp, J. 2017. Exploiting corpora to address the discipline-specific vocabulary needs of students. In J. Kemp (Ed.) EAP in a Rapidly Changing Landscape: issues, challenges and solutions. Proceedings of the 2015 BALEAP Conference. Reading: Garnet, 205-216.Šarčević, S., 1997. New Approach to Legal Translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Williams, C. 2007. Tradition and Change in Legal English: Verbal constructions in prescriptive texts. 2nd edn. Bern: Peter Lang.

jenny.kemp@le.ac.uk

Images: Word clouds: http://www.wordle.net/create and https://www.wordclouds.com/ Other images the authors own or  licensed by Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated. 

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