2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis
| Format: | General Document |
|---|
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| building | INTELEK Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| collectionurl | https://intelek.unisza.edu.my/intelek/pages/search.php?search=!collection3 |
| copyright | Copyright©PWB2025 |
| country | Malaysia |
| date | 2016-02-10 |
| format | General Document |
| id | 16031 |
| institution | UniSZA |
| originalfilename | PREPOSITIONAL COLLIGATIONS IN NIGERIAN LEGAL DISCOURSE_ A CORPUS ANALYSIS (PHD_2019).pdf |
| person | Ibrahim Bashir |
| recordtype | oai_dc |
| resourceurl | https://intelek.unisza.edu.my/intelek/pages/view.php?ref=16031 |
| sourcemedia | Server storage Scanned document |
| spelling | 16031 https://intelek.unisza.edu.my/intelek/pages/view.php?ref=16031 https://intelek.unisza.edu.my/intelek/pages/search.php?search=!collection3 General Document Malaysia Library Staff (Top Management) Library Staff (Management) Library Staff (Support) Terengganu Faculty of Languages & Communication English application/pdf 1.5 Server storage Scanned document Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin UniSZA Private Access UNIVERSITI SULTAN ZAINAL ABIDIN SAMBox 2.3.4; modified using iTextSharp™ 5.5.10 ©2000-2016 iText Group NV (AGPL-version) Copyright©PWB2025 367 PREPOSITIONAL COLLIGATIONS IN NIGERIAN LEGAL DISCOURSE_ A CORPUS ANALYSIS (PHD_2019).pdf 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis 2016-02-10 Ibrahim Bashir Law—Nigeria—Language Prepositional colligations in legal texts Corpus-based study of legal discourse Legal English syntax in Nigeria Recent development in corpus linguistics has placed emphasis on the language used in a particular discourse and functions of texts as linguistic units. The empirical studies using corpus analysis have shown that prepositions are essential linguistic features of legal phraseology. Prepositional colligations are linguistic features that are under explored in the field of legal phraseology despite of their prevalent distributions and various functions. The previous studies reviewed have also shown a gap in this area. The present study employed a corpus analysis which aimed at investigating the phraseological nature of the English prepositional colligations and their functions in Nigerian legal discourse. It specifically purported to achieve the overreaching objectives – to examine the prepositional colligations commonly used in Nigerian legal texts, and to explore the functions of prepositional colligations in Nigerian legal texts. This study was resided on the synergy of three theories of Firth’s ‘Contextual Theory of Meaning’, Halliday’s ‘Systemic Functional Linguistics’ and Hoey’s ‘Lexical Priming’. It employed a corpus-based methodology which encompassed both the aspects of quantitative and qualitative research approach. The data were generated primarily through one newly compiled corpus (Nigerian Legal Corpus - NLC) and two reference corpora (British National Corpus of Law – BNCL, and British National Corpus of General Written English - BNCW). NLC contained 546,313 word-tokens; BNCL contained 2.2 million word-tokens, while BNCW has 1 million word-tokens. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and analysis of concordance lines. Three software tools were used to aid the analysis. The tools are AntConc (v.3.5.7), Lextutor (v.8.3), and Log-likelihood Calculator. The findings revealed that prepositional colligations were prevalent linguistics features in Nigerian discourse. Comparing NLC with two reference corpora (BNCL and BNCW), the findings showed that prepositional colligations were over-represented in the NLC and BNCL corpora and under-represented in BNCW corpus. The findings showed different semantic and pragmatic functions of prepositional colligations, such as referencing patterns (text deixis), which include legal authority and conflict avoidance/resolution, and deixes relations that show time, place, cause, and effect. It was also found that legal practitioners over-used prepositional colligations to serve their specialised purposes such as persuasion and precision. The study concludes that prepositional colligations were important linguistic elements that formed the phraseological profiles of Nigerian legal discourse due to their prevalent distributions and multifarious semantic and pragmatic functions. Dissertations, Academic Thesis |
| spellingShingle | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| state | Terengganu |
| subject | Law—Nigeria—Language Dissertations, Academic |
| summary | Recent development in corpus linguistics has placed emphasis on the language used in a particular discourse and functions of texts as linguistic units. The empirical studies using corpus analysis have shown that prepositions are essential linguistic features of legal phraseology. Prepositional colligations are linguistic features that are under explored in the field of legal phraseology despite of their prevalent distributions and various functions. The previous studies reviewed have also shown a gap in this area. The present study employed a corpus analysis which aimed at investigating the phraseological nature of the English prepositional colligations and their functions in Nigerian legal discourse. It specifically purported to achieve the overreaching objectives – to examine the prepositional colligations commonly used in Nigerian legal texts, and to explore the functions of prepositional colligations in Nigerian legal texts. This study was resided on the synergy of three theories of Firth’s ‘Contextual Theory of Meaning’, Halliday’s ‘Systemic Functional Linguistics’ and Hoey’s ‘Lexical Priming’. It employed a corpus-based methodology which encompassed both the aspects of quantitative and qualitative research approach. The data were generated primarily through one newly compiled corpus (Nigerian Legal Corpus - NLC) and two reference corpora (British National Corpus of Law – BNCL, and British National Corpus of General Written English - BNCW). NLC contained 546,313 word-tokens; BNCL contained 2.2 million word-tokens, while BNCW has 1 million word-tokens. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and analysis of concordance lines. Three software tools were used to aid the analysis. The tools are AntConc (v.3.5.7), Lextutor (v.8.3), and Log-likelihood Calculator. The findings revealed that prepositional colligations were prevalent linguistics features in Nigerian discourse. Comparing NLC with two reference corpora (BNCL and BNCW), the findings showed that prepositional colligations were over-represented in the NLC and BNCL corpora and under-represented in BNCW corpus. The findings showed different semantic and pragmatic functions of prepositional colligations, such as referencing patterns (text deixis), which include legal authority and conflict avoidance/resolution, and deixes relations that show time, place, cause, and effect. It was also found that legal practitioners over-used prepositional colligations to serve their specialised purposes such as persuasion and precision. The study concludes that prepositional colligations were important linguistic elements that formed the phraseological profiles of Nigerian legal discourse due to their prevalent distributions and multifarious semantic and pragmatic functions. |
| title | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| title_full | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| title_fullStr | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| title_short | 2019_Prepositional Colligations in Nigerian Legal Discourse: A Corpus Analysis |
| title_sort | 2019_prepositional colligations in nigerian legal discourse: a corpus analysis |