The Legal Language of Scottish Burghs: Standardization and Lexical Bundles (1380-1560) (Oxford Studies in Language and Law)

This book offers an innovative, corpus-driven approach to historical legal discourse. It is the first monograph to examine textual standardization patterns in legal and administrative texts on the basis of lexical bundles, drawing on a comprehensive corpus of medieval and early modern legal texts. The book's focus is on legal language in Scotland, where law--with its own nomenclature and its own repertoire of discourse features--was shaped and marked by the concomitant standardizing of the vernacular language, Scots, a sister language to the English of the day. Joanna Kopaczyk's study is based on a unique combination of two methodological frameworks: a rigorous corpus-driven data analysis and a pragmaphilological, context-sensitive qualitative interpretation of the findings. Providing the reader with a rich socio-historical background of legal discourse in medieval and early modern Scottish burghs, Kopaczyk traces the links between orality, community, and law, which are reflected in discourse features and linguistic standardization of legal and administrative texts. In this context, the book also revisits important ingredients of legal language, such as binomials or performatives. Kopaczyk's study is grounded in the functional approach to language and pays particular attention to referential, interpersonal, and textual functions of lexical bundles in the texts. It also establishes a connection between the structure and function of the recurrent patterns, and paves the way for the employment of new methodologies in historical discourse analysis. Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgements 11 List of Maps 13 List of Figures 14 List of Tables 15 Abbreviations 16 1. Introduction: Scots as the Language of the Law 20 1.1. Language, Law, and History: The Scottish Dimension 20 1.2. The Aims of the Book 21 1.3. Interdisciplinary Investigation 22 1.4. Scots: A Standardizing Vernacular 24 1.5. Overview of the Chapters 28 PART ONE: The Language 30 2. The Language of Legal Texts 32 2.1. Introduction 32 2.2. The Terminological Maze 32 2.3. Law and Language: Creation and Transmission 34 2.4. Characteristics of Legal Discourse 39 3. Exploring Language of the Past: Context, Discourse, and Text 50 3.1. Introduction 50 3.2. Language Use and Context 51 3.3. Discourse and Text in a Functional Perspective 52 3.4. Genre and Text Type 57 3.5. Standardization in Discourse 61 3.6. Networks and Communities 63 3.7. Discourse of the Past: Corpus Approaches 66 4. Repetition, Fixedness, and Lexical Bundles 70 4.1. Introduction 70 4.2. Repetition and Fixedness in Language 70 4.3. Multi-Word Units and Prefabs 76 4.4. Lexical Bundles 79 4.5. Binomials and Multinomials: A Feature of Legal Language 85 PART ONE: Summary and Conclusions 96 PART TWO: The Burghs 98 5. Burghs in Scottish History 100 5.1. Introduction 100 5.2. Before the Burghs 101 5.3. The Development of Urban Centres in Scotland 101 5.4. Scotland and the Burghs (1380–1560) 106 5.5. The Country Divided: Highlands and Lowlands 115 5.6. History and Identity through Language and Law 116 6. Living in a Burgh 119 6.1. Introduction 119 6.2. A General Outlook 119 6.3. People of the Burgh 120 6.4. Burgh Economy 127 6.5. Contacts between Burghs 131 7. Law and the Burgh 133 7.1. Introduction 133 7.2. A Historical Overview of Law in Scotland 133 7.3. Law and Order in the Burghs 142 7.4. Men of Law 150 7.5. Legal Records 152 PART TWO: Summary and Conclusions 156 PART THREE: The Legal Language of the Burghs 158 8. EdHeW Corpus Material and Lexical Bundles 160 8.1. Introduction 160 8.2. Corpora Characteristics 162 8.3. Lexical Bundles: A New Methodology in Historical Linguistics 164 8.4. Preparing the Data: Artificial Standardization of Spelling 164 8.5. Extracting Lexical Bundles 169 9. The Grammar of Lexical Bundles in Early Legal Scots 177 9.1. Introduction 177 9.2. Noun Phrase Fragments 181 9.3. Prepositional Phrase Fragments 189 9.4. Verb Phrase Fragments 195 9.5. Clause Fragments 200 9.6. Conclusions: Structural Properties of Lexical Bundles in Early Legal Scots 203 10. Binomials and Multinomials in Early Legal Scots 207 10.1. Introduction 207 10.2. Binomials 208 10.3. Multinomials 223 10.4. Conclusions: Binomials and Multinomials in Early Legal Scots 225 11. Short Bundles: Functional Properties 227 11.1. Introduction 227 11.2. Functional Classification 227 11.3. Short Bundle Functions in EdHeW 229 11.4. Conclusions: Short Bundles in Context 253 12. Long Bundles: Functional Properties and Standardization 261 12.1. Standardization Triggers and Long Formulaic Bundles 261 12.2. Emergent Standardizing Patterns: The Diachronic Dimension 263 12.3. Emergent Standardizing Patterns: The Diatopic Dimension 276 12.4. Symptoms of Textual Standardization 280 PART THREE: General Conclusions 284 Notes 290 References 312 Index of Scots Language Terms 338 A 338 B 338 C 339 D 339 E 340 F 340 G 340 H 341 I 341 J 341 K 341 L 341 M 342 N 342 O 342 P 343 Q 343 R 343 S 343 T 344 U 345 V 345 W 345 Y 345 Subject Index 346 A 346 B 346 C 347 D 348 E 348 F 349 G 349 H 349 I 350 J 350 K 350 L 350 M 352 N 352 O 352 P 353 Q 353 R 353 S 354 T 355 U 356 V 356 W 356 Y 356 The book offers an innovative, corpus-driven approach to historical legal discourse. It is the first monograph to examine textual standardization patterns in legal and administrative texts on the basis of lexical bundles, drawn from a comprehensive corpus of medieval and early modern legal texts. The focus is on Scotland, where Scots law, with its own nomenclature and its own repertoire of discourse features, was being shaped and marked by the concomitant standardizing of the vernacular language, Scots, a sister language to the English of the day. The study offers a unique combination of two methodological frameworks: a rigorous corpus-driven data analysis, and a pragmaphilological, context-sensitive qualitative interpretation of the findings. Providing the reader with a rich socio-historical background of legal discourse in medieval and early modern Scottish burghs, this monograph traces the links between orality, literacy, and law, which are reflected in discourse features and linguistic standardization of legal and administrative texts. In this context, the book also revisits important ingredients of legal language, such as binomials. The study is grounded in the functional approach to language and pays attention to referential, interpersonal and textual functions of lexical bundles in the texts. It also establishes a connection between the structure and function of the recurrent patterns and paves the way for the employment of new methodologies in historical discourse analysis The first monograph to examine textual standardization patterns in legal and administrative texts on the basis of lexical bundles, drawing from a comprehensive corpus of medieval and early modern legal texts