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Chapter 9. The evolution of a legal genre

Rhetorical moves in British patent specifications, 1711 to 1860
  • Nicholas Groom and Jack Grieve
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Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse
This chapter is in the book Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse

Abstract

This chapter provides a diachronic corpus-based analysis of a vitally important, yet currently very under-researched, legal genre: the patent specification. The empirical focus of the analysis is on changes in the rhetorical move structure of the patent specification genre over the first 150 years of its existence, as represented by a corpus of British patent specification texts ranging from 1711 to 1860. The methodology of the study involves reducing each exemplar text in the corpus to a simple letter code string representing its rhetorical move structure, and then submitting the resulting list of code strings to two kinds of computational analysis: one focusing on the frequency and distribution of individual rhetorical moves over the period of the study, and the other focusing on the frequency and distribution of the different move sequence types attested in the corpus. It is argued that the findings of the study are consistent with, and may thus be interpreted as providing empirical support for, generalized evolutionary theoretical models of genre change.

Abstract

This chapter provides a diachronic corpus-based analysis of a vitally important, yet currently very under-researched, legal genre: the patent specification. The empirical focus of the analysis is on changes in the rhetorical move structure of the patent specification genre over the first 150 years of its existence, as represented by a corpus of British patent specification texts ranging from 1711 to 1860. The methodology of the study involves reducing each exemplar text in the corpus to a simple letter code string representing its rhetorical move structure, and then submitting the resulting list of code strings to two kinds of computational analysis: one focusing on the frequency and distribution of individual rhetorical moves over the period of the study, and the other focusing on the frequency and distribution of the different move sequence types attested in the corpus. It is argued that the findings of the study are consistent with, and may thus be interpreted as providing empirical support for, generalized evolutionary theoretical models of genre change.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Chapter 1. “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?” English legal discourse past and present 1
  5. Part I. Cross-genre and cross-linguistic variation
  6. Chapter 2. English and Italian land contracts 25
  7. Chapter 3. Conditionals in spoken courtroom and parliamentary discourse in English, French, and Spanish 51
  8. Chapter 4. Part-of-speech patterns in legal genres 79
  9. Chapter 5. A comparison of lexical bundles in spoken courtroom language across time, registers, and varieties 105
  10. Chapter 6. “It is not just a fact that the law requires this, but it is a reasonable fact” 123
  11. Part II. Diachronic variation
  12. Chapter 7. Are law reports an ‘agile’ or an ‘uptight’ register? 149
  13. Chapter 8. Interpersonality in legal written discourse 171
  14. Chapter 9. The evolution of a legal genre 201
  15. Chapter 10. The representation of citizens and monarchy in Acts of Parliament in 1800 to 2000 235
  16. Chapter 11. Drinking and crime 261
  17. Name index 287
  18. Subject index 291
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.91.09gro

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Chapter 1. “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?” English legal discourse past and present 1
  5. Part I. Cross-genre and cross-linguistic variation
  6. Chapter 2. English and Italian land contracts 25
  7. Chapter 3. Conditionals in spoken courtroom and parliamentary discourse in English, French, and Spanish 51
  8. Chapter 4. Part-of-speech patterns in legal genres 79
  9. Chapter 5. A comparison of lexical bundles in spoken courtroom language across time, registers, and varieties 105
  10. Chapter 6. “It is not just a fact that the law requires this, but it is a reasonable fact” 123
  11. Part II. Diachronic variation
  12. Chapter 7. Are law reports an ‘agile’ or an ‘uptight’ register? 149
  13. Chapter 8. Interpersonality in legal written discourse 171
  14. Chapter 9. The evolution of a legal genre 201
  15. Chapter 10. The representation of citizens and monarchy in Acts of Parliament in 1800 to 2000 235
  16. Chapter 11. Drinking and crime 261
  17. Name index 287
  18. Subject index 291
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