FREQUENT PHRASEOLOGY AS POINTERS TO EVALUATION IN JUDICIAL OPINIONS: A CORPUS-DRIVEN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
FREQUENT PHRASEOLOGY AS POINTERS TO EVALUATION IN JUDICIAL OPINIONS: A CORPUS-DRIVEN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Summary/Abstract: Using Sketch Engine to explore two sets of data, a corpus of US Supreme Court opinionsand a corpus of opinions from Poland’s Trybunał Konstytucyjny (in literal translation:Constitutional Tribunal), this paper explores the use of evaluative language in the context ofjudicial justification. Adopting a corpus-driven approach, the analysis has shown that anumber of 3-4-grams are found in co-occurrence patterns with value-laden lexis in both theSCOTUS and the Constitutional Tribunal justifications. In semantic terms, these expressionshave been found to serve as pointers to evaluation and as clues to the textual segments whereargumentation unfolds. The scrutiny of the relevant co-texts has revealed that these phrasestend to be utilized as building blocks of judicial discourse to help frame interpretive andargumentative concerns.

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