The Irish judiciary’s approach to bilingualism as the constitutional guarantee of the right to use either Irish or English for any official purpose has proved highly flexible. However, while emphasis has been laid on principles of constitutional interpretation from the practitioner’s perspective, the discursive dimension of cases involving language policy has yet to be fully elucidated. This paper combines quantitative analysis with a qualitative perspective to focus on phraseological and argumentative patterns in Supreme Court judgments on language policy, based on a small corpus. First, the 10 most frequent lexical bundles of the corpus were extracted to study the main discourse functions of phraseology in context. Second, a manual text analysis was conducted of the two cases where recurrent phraseological patterns were most widely attested. This allowed for the isolation of the argument schemes underlying the structure of the Justices’ opinions. While phraseology points to a shared institutional identity of Irish Justices as gatekeepers of the Constitution, the use of argumentative patterns suggests that they may forge heterogeneous professional identities, by shifting from a rigoristic view of language rights to forms of judicial pragmatism.

Phraseology, argumentation and identity in Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on language policy / Mazzi, Davide. - In: JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE. - ISSN 2040-3658. - 11:3(2018), pp. 315-337. [10.1558/japl.32729]

Phraseology, argumentation and identity in Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on language policy

mazzi. davide
2018

Abstract

The Irish judiciary’s approach to bilingualism as the constitutional guarantee of the right to use either Irish or English for any official purpose has proved highly flexible. However, while emphasis has been laid on principles of constitutional interpretation from the practitioner’s perspective, the discursive dimension of cases involving language policy has yet to be fully elucidated. This paper combines quantitative analysis with a qualitative perspective to focus on phraseological and argumentative patterns in Supreme Court judgments on language policy, based on a small corpus. First, the 10 most frequent lexical bundles of the corpus were extracted to study the main discourse functions of phraseology in context. Second, a manual text analysis was conducted of the two cases where recurrent phraseological patterns were most widely attested. This allowed for the isolation of the argument schemes underlying the structure of the Justices’ opinions. While phraseology points to a shared institutional identity of Irish Justices as gatekeepers of the Constitution, the use of argumentative patterns suggests that they may forge heterogeneous professional identities, by shifting from a rigoristic view of language rights to forms of judicial pragmatism.
2018
11
3
315
337
Phraseology, argumentation and identity in Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on language policy / Mazzi, Davide. - In: JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE. - ISSN 2040-3658. - 11:3(2018), pp. 315-337. [10.1558/japl.32729]
Mazzi, Davide
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
JALPP00526_Mazzi.pdf

Accesso riservato

Tipologia: Versione originale dell'autore proposta per la pubblicazione
Dimensione 444.29 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
444.29 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia
Pubblicazioni consigliate

Licenza Creative Commons
I metadati presenti in IRIS UNIMORE sono rilasciati con licenza Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal, mentre i file delle pubblicazioni sono rilasciati con licenza Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale (CC BY 4.0), salvo diversa indicazione.
In caso di violazione di copyright, contattare Supporto Iris

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11380/1169682
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 0
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact