1

A Corpus Discovery Approach to Semi-Technical Vocabulary Issues in Teaching

Legal English

Hajime TERAUCHI, PhD (corresponding author)

Takachiho University,
Omiya 2-19-1
Suginami, Tokyo 169-8508 JAPAN
email: hajime@takachiho.ac.jp
tel: +81-489-63-7901
fax: +81-489-63-7901

bio: 50 words

Judy NOGUCHI, PhD

Mukogawa Women’s University

Japan
email: KHB04356@nifty.ne.jp

bio: 50 words

Gregory POOLE, PhD

Takachiho University,
Omiya 2-19-1
Suginami, Tokyo 169-8508 JAPAN
email: gregory.poole@st-antonys.oxon.org

Gregory Poole, Associate Professor at Takachiho University, Tokyo, has graduate

degrees in linguistics (MA, Surrey), Japanese studies (MA, Sheffield), and social
anthropology (PhD, Oxford). Recent publications include “The Japanese University in
Crisis”, co-authored with I. Amano, Higher Education (November 2005).
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Abstract

This paper discusses issues related to the teaching of semi-technical vocabulary and
presents tools and techniques for analyzing such terms with the aim at a discovery
learning approach. We focus on legal vocabulary from a corpus of US Constitutional
Cases which was analyzed for word meanings, grammatical features, collocational
patterns and frequently occurring specific discoursal features. An OCHA approach is
used to have students observe the language features of the target genre, classify the
findings, hypothesize about their usage and apply the findings during reading or writing
activities.

In an EFL environment, a smooth transition is necessary from English for General

Purposes (EGP) curricula to field-specific language teaching. In this paper we present
an example of the development of a legal English dictionary for Japanese-speaking
students at the graduate school level and present an approach that helps students to
identify the differences in the usage of words in general and specific contexts as well as
to find collocations common to field-specific corpora. This work lays the basis for
developing effective teaching materials and involving students in the examination of a
dedicated minicorpus for a discovery learning approach. The model should be
applicable to other fields of language for specific/special purposes.

Keywords: (max 6 keywords)

ESP, LSP, EAP, corpus linguistics, legal language, second language pedagogy
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1. Introduction

1.1 Background

On March 31, 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

Technology announced an “Action plan to cultivate ‘Japanese with English abilities’,”

recognizing the need to improve English language teaching in Japan. One of the

specifically stated goals was having university graduates possess the “English language

skills required for specialized fields or for those active in international society.” This

announcement galvanized those involved in language education in Japan and has raised

much interest in using English for Specific Purposes (ESP) methods in lieu of English

curricula emphasizing literature and skills-based approaches. For a successful transition

to ESP methods from the English for general purposes approaches familiar to both

students and instructors, we decided to start by focusing on the teaching of semi-

technical vocabulary.

The field of study described in this paper is related to law studies but the approach

should be applicable to other ESP fields. This paper describes an approach to

developing and implementing ESP methodology to create an online Wiki-style English

dictionary for law-related terminology. The need for such a dictionary is great as law
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dictionaries in Japan offer only definitions of legal technical words and their historical

background. They do not offer examples of how these words are used in context nor

explanations of how general words are used in a legal sense in legal documents.

1.2 Project goals

The main goal of this project was to develop methods for teaching students how to

utilize ESP reference materials to create useful resources which could be of benefit for

not only their immediate studies but also aid their future professional development. As a

model case, we decided to use a corpus of legal English based on actual US

Constitutional Cases (USCC). The corpus was constructed from the entire set of 14,531

U.S. Constitutional Cases issued by the Federal Supreme Court through August 2000.

This set of court cases is perhaps the largest such corpus of legal English in the world,

being composed of 144, 588 word types and 83,442,416 word tokens. The analyses

presented below demonstrate how words used in US Constitutional Cases differ from

general English usage in terms of both frequency and meaning.

As ESP methodology includes the notion of discourse community, language educators

should have some basic understanding of the context in which the language is used. In
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this light, we begin with a brief description of the history of law in Japan. We then

present our approach to addressing vocabulary issues in this field and describe a tool

that can be used to help students grasp how to create useful self-help resources.

2. An OCHA approach to raising awareness of vocabulary

The aim of this project was to develop tools and techniques to have students acquire

ESP vocabulary. To encourage learner autonomy, an OCHA approach is suggested to

have learners observe the form features, classify what they observe, hypothesize about

their usage and apply what they have considered (Author A 2003). In focusing on form

(Ellis 2001), students are asked to observe rhetorical, grammatical, lexical, technical

and phonological features of genre texts. While this project focuses on vocabulary

learning, the other form features, e.g., rhetorical and grammatical, are also important for

understanding the contextual environment of the lexical items.

2.1 Corpus linguistics for ESP

The focus on vocabulary means the use of corpus linguistic techniques. Here, what

Hunston (2002, p. 2) states is useful: “linguists have always used the word corpus to
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describe a collection of naturally occurring examples of language, consisting of

anything from a few sentences to a set of written texts or tape recordings, which have

been collected for linguistic study.” For this project on the law vocabulary, we

employed a minicorpus of texts, in particular, a 900-case subset of a larger corpus of

14,531 U.S. Constitutional Cases issued by the Federal Supreme Court.

In ESP, the technical terms usually do not pose too serious a problem because there is

usually a one-to-one equivalence of terms in both the learner’s native language and

English. However, the subtechnical vocabulary can be problematic because it includes

terms which have many possible meanings (Herbert 1965; Katsuragi 1998; Author A

1999, 2001a). Also, in ESP, “it is not single words which are always difficult, but

phrases, so that common combinations of words should be taught, not just the individual

vocabulary items of discipline.” (Fanning 1977, mentioned in Robinson 1980)

2.1.1 Disambiguation using corpus linguistics

With this background, let us consider how corpus linguistics can be used to aid ESP

vocabulary acquisition. First, let us examine how it can help disambiguate the

synonyms: alien, foreign, stranger, and immigrant. The dictionary meanings are not
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very helpful for a second-language learner and can, in fact, be confusing. Examination

of the 900-case subset of US constitutional cases being considered in this study reveals

the specific usage environments of these terms. The most commonly used is foreign

(712 examples), followed by alien(s)(303), immigrant(s) (85) and stranger(s) (21).

Examining the most commonly used foreign reveals its overwhelming use as an

adjective, with no example of the noun form.

foreign commerce 55 samples, 18 texts

oreign affairs power, violates the Foreign Commerce Clause, and is preempted by the

representing companies engaged in foreign commerce; 34 of its members were on the

d similar concerns in our cases on foreign commerce and foreign relations. See, e.g.,

pped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of

of foreign 76 examples, 23 texts

n displaying, within 500 feet of foreign embassies, banners designed t

. In this case, the positions of foreign governments and the Executive

t. In consequence, statements of foreign powers necessarily involved

mal diplomatic protests, risk of foreign retaliation, and statements

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foreign nations 20 examples, 10 texts

n by allowing private parties and foreign nations to challenge state procu

ed fear of criminal prosecution by foreign nations including Lithuania and

s done so with the acquiescence of foreign nations. See Alabama and Missis

es and citizens of other States or foreign nations. As we have explained:

n and convenience of commerce with foreign nations and among the several s

Observation of examples can also be helpful for learning about grammatical features

such as the use of prepositions and articles as well as the selection and usage of singular

and plural nouns. Here are examples to illustrate these features. The following

examples of alien to can be used to show students to importance of examining the

semantic context and grammatical context when trying to decide on the meaning of a

particular word.

alien to 16 examples, 7 texts

withholding only bars deporting an alien to a particular country or countries,

sing from any action to remove an alien to judicial review of a final order--
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pen an investigation or subject an alien to surveillance [***57] belong to t

ral shall not deport or return any alien to a country if the Attorney General

stigation, which could subject the alien to eventual deportation, into the al

or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the

ed out that federal courts are not alien to a bistate entity Congress partici

Government. Federal courts are not alien to such an entity, for they are ordai

ide, democratic vote -- so utterly alien to our constitutional system, the Cou

The use of the English article system is problematic for Japanese speakers. The

following examples of article usage with evidence can be informative (900 texts, 5150

instances)

(no “the”) adjective + evidence at sentence start

Circumstantial evidence of the prudent

tivity. Cogent evidence regarding thei

DECISION: Drug evidence seized after a

arby. Forensic evidence indicated that

Hearsay evidence is inadmissibl

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on. Mitigating evidence unrelated to

88). Relevant evidence may, for examp

the + (adjective) + evidence

with the plurality that, like the above evidence of actual diversion, the bor

of Strickland. After hearing the additional evidence developed in the postconvicti

ree with JUSTICE STEVENS that the available evidence supports the conclusion that

n20 Texas argues that the corroborative evidence required by Article 38.07 "ne

s voluntary confession--where the favorable evidence is to the effect that (a) th

from Fisher, but in light of the historical evidence that the Self-Incrimination

blishment Clause is rejected. The limited evidence amassed by respondents durin

t -- to provide the jury with the mitigating evidence that his trial counsel either

reasonable probability that the omitted evidence would have changed the conclu

is dominantly in cases where the physical evidence is inconclusive that prosecut

as a trial court, and because the relevant evidence is either documentary or unc

olds title to land)), much of the standard evidence of sovereign prescription is

Another frequently encountered problem with Japanese speakers is the choice of

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preposition to be used with a noun or a verb. Examples from a minicorpus can be very

helpful for guiding the student with examples from their field. Here is a list showing

how varied the prepositional choices can be and what collocations are frequently used.

Preposition + evidence

585 evidence_of 49 evidence_against

519 of_evidence 47 evidence_as

286 of_the_evidence 46 evidence_on

245 evidence_in 44 evidence_for

191 evidence_to 41 evidence_to_support

100 evidence_of_the 41 the_evidence_of

89 evidence_in_the 40 into_evidence

89 rules_of_evidence 35 no_evidence_of

70 preponderance_of_the_evidence 34 of_evidence_of

69 as_evidence 33 evidence_in_the_record

69 sufficiency_of_the_evidence 32 evidence_from

59 evidence_at 31 evidence_before

59 evidence_or 30 evidence_tending_to
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58 evidence_of_a 30 of_evidence_and

55 by_clear_and_convincing_evidence 28 by_evidence

3. Teaching and reference tools

3.1 Development of teaching strategies

As discussed above, while the main focus of this project was aiding student vocabulary

acquisition, in the case of ESP vocabulary, the learner should be made aware of the

various features of a genre text. Here we present an example of a pedagogical strategy

that focuses students’ awareness on the lexical and syntactical features of the target

texts. Next, utilizing this strategy, we present two examples of “pedagogic tasks” (Long

2002) that can be used in the classroom. The pedagogic method utilizes Author A’s

(2003) “OCHA” approach to observing, classifying, hypothesizing, and then applying

the language knowledge acquired through this observation to the reading, writing and

understanding of ESP texts and genres.

3.2 Lexical choices

As Author (2004, p. 24) has demonstrated elsewhere, learners of languages for specific

academic purposes can be restricted by reference tools that may overemphasize the
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specialized meanings of the language of texts specific to their subject area. At the

expense of this focus on technical language, non-technical and semi-technical usage

may be overlooked. This oversight is apparent in dictionaries and learning aids designed

for specialists and may result from the authors fully understanding the concept of genre

analysis essential to ESP theory. What is needed is more collaboration between subject

area professionals and ESP, or LSP (languages for specific purposes) professionals (see,

eg., Author, et al. 2004). The problem also extends to the second language and

specialized subject classrooms, where the emphasis on technical language may result in

students ignoring the frequent use of general meanings in ESP texts, as Author (2001, p.

181-3) found with “trial” and “try.”

To overcome this limitation in both LSP reference materials and classroom pedagogy,

here we introduce a strategy that integrates an innovative, corpus-based legal dictionary

with a teaching strategy to promote vocabulary learning. First, using the sentence-level

syntax of the genre text as a key to interpreting “the recurring communicative event”

(Author 2001a), the following OCHA steps are introduced to learners as an aid to help

them narrow semantic choices to arrive understand vocabulary items. After students

have learned these steps, they are encouraged to apply the approach as a self-study aid.
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3.3 Strategic steps in the OCHA approach

Students are asked to do the following:

1) Observe the form features. In this case, focus on the lexical items and their

environments. Identify key words and patterns in the concordance lines that aid in

clarification.

2) Classify these features. Is there a particular collocation or pattern that is repeatedly

used?

3) Hypothesize about the usage. For example, if the focus item is a verb, a) what

preposition follows it, and what is the object of the preposition? (e.g., ‘charged with

power’, ‘charged with murder’); b) what is the subject and object of the verb; c)

what is the direct object (auxiliaries, complements, modifiers, etc.) that is acted on

by the verb. If it is a noun, a) what is the verb that acts on the noun or b) what is the

pronoun referent?

4) Applying what has been learned from this process involves having students try to

explain how they arrived at their hypotheses and solutions. This practice is a

valuable tool to reinforce learning strategies, as well as a way to have students take

active control of their own learning processes.

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4. Task examples

As specific examples of how the OCHA approach is implemented, let us consider how

to teach the various meanings of the word token “charge.” First, students are shown five

examples of its usage from the USCC corpus of USCC.

Usage One:

That even if Easton is to be regarded as master, at the time when the repairs and

supplies were furnished, the fact that they were so furnished, with his knowledge and

consent and under his superintendence, is sufficient to charge the barque with the usual

maritime lien, notwithstanding that Leach may have ordered or directed them.1

Usage Two:

And the charge of taking the vessel to the Pacific, and illegally detaining her there for

his own benefit and advantage, was never heard of until payment for the repairs and

supplies furnished to their barque was made by the libellants.2

1
14003
WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
THIS was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
2
14003
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Usage Three:

The items ought to have been inserted in the other account, signed by him at the same

time, which contains the charges for which he was personally liable; and his admission

of that account would have been quite sufficient to verify these items.3

Usage Four:

The court refused so to instruct the jury, but charged them: "That the court of admiralty

could not proceed against the vessel while she remained in the custody of an

independent and competent jurisdiction; that the presence of the marshal on the ship did

not prove his custody, for the sheriff's officer was there before him; that the marshal did

not dispossess the sheriff, but prudently retired himself, and informed the court in his

return that the vessel was in the custody of the sheriff; that if the sheriff first took

possession of the vessel, and maintained it until[**22] she was sold to the plaintiffs,

WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
This was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
3
14003
WILLIAM THOMAS, SOUTHWORTH BARNES, NATHANIEL RUSSELL, AND OTHERS, OWNERS OF THE
BARQUE LAURA, APPELLANTS, v. JAMES W. OSBORN.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 22; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 416; 15 L. Ed. 534; 19 HOW 22
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
THIS was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Maryland.
 17

they had the better title; and that the fact of the continuing possession of the sheriff was

for the jury."4

Usage Five:

The laws of the State charge the master with the custody of the slave, and provide for

the[**232] maintenance and security of their relation.5

Next, using the OCHA strategy as a guideline, students are asked to complete two tasks.

Task One (usage matching 1)

Directions: For each of the five examples above decide whether the usage of “charge” in

the sentence is a general (‘G’) or legal (‘L’) definition.

4
JAMES L. AND SAMUEL L. TAYLOR, ADMINISTRATORS OF ROBERTTAYLOR, DECEASED, PLAINTIFFS IN
ERROR, v. NATHAN T. CARRYL, WHO SURVIVED WILLIAM J. WARD.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
61 U.S. 583; 1857 U.S. LEXIS 490; 15 L. Ed. 1028; 20 HOW 583
DECEMBER, 1857, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]This case was brought up from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, by a writ of error
issued under the twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act.
5
14009
DRED SCOTT, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. JOHN F. A. SANDFORD.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
60 U.S. 393; 1856 U.S. LEXIS 472; 15 L. Ed. 691; 19 HOW 393
DECEMBER, 1856, Term
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1]
This case was brought up, by writ of error, from the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of
Missouri.
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Task Two (usage matching 2)

Directions: Match each of the uses of “charge” in Task One with the gloss below which

is closest in meaning.

A) An obligation or indebtedness to be paid; a cost; an expense occurred.

B) A formal accusation of the commission of a crime.

C) To instruct a jury about the law.

D) To issue a lien or encumbrance upon property or land.

E) To impose a duty or responsibility on.

5. Development of an electronic tool to aid the OCHA process

To facilitate student work with the corpus and encourage self-study, we developed a

system for electronically searching and translating U.S. Constitutional Cases that also

addresses the need for native language support with Japanese glosses and contextual

clues. The main features of this tool include:

1) A search engine for individual words or phrases in the corpus.

2) Access to external dictionary sources:

a) Identification of common Japanese and English translations as well as usage

(ALC-English-Japanese dictionary),
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b) Display of specialized usage of legal terms (Dictionary of British and American

Legal English),

c) Identification of actual usage in text of U.S. Constitutional Cases through a

display of example sentences) (complete set of USCC),

d) Identification of frequency of usage of terms within text of the USCC through a

display of example sentences (corpus of example phrases)

3) Search refinement feature to link the results of a search in one set of data to the next

search in a different data set.

Figure 1 presents the schematic diagram of this reference tool, an electronic “ESP Law

Dictionary for Japanese Students.” A major advantage of this dictionary is the function

that allows students to add their findings to the refine the definition of a word or phrase.

This Wiki-style feature can raise student motivation by giving them an opportunity to

contribute to the learning of others in the class and be useful for their own future

reference. In the future, we hope to make this available online to allow students in other

fields with their own minicorpora to build ESP vocabulary learning environments in

other fields.
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6. Discussion

The aim of this paper is threefold: to discuss the rationale for using a minicorpus to

teach ESP vocabulary, to introduce the OCHA method to enable students to become

aware of learning strategies for independent learning, and to develop an online

electronic tool to aid ESP vocabulary acquisition. First, we discussed issues related to

the teaching of semi-technical vocabulary, presented tools and techniques for analyzing

such terms, and offered examples of how the analyses can aid the acquisition of

vocabulary in ESP contexts. Here we used legal vocabulary from a corpus of US

Constitutional Cases from the United States. This dedicated minicorpus (as opposed to

large-scale general corpora) was used for the examination of word meanings,

grammatical features, collocational patterns and frequently occurring specific discoursal

features. This information is essential for resolving the problems of law dictionaries

which the lack of examples of how legal words should be used in context and how

words with general senses are used with legal senses in legal documents.

We proposed using the OCHA approach to enable students to discover usages of the

ESP vocabulary of their field. By having them observe the differences in the usage of

words in general and specific contexts as well as to find collocations common to field-
 21

specific corpora, students can become aware of how to handle the vocabulary learning

process. In actual classroom application, this strategy and the tasks presented above

worked well, with university students quickly grasping the OCHA approach and

strategic steps for completing the tasks. Knowledge of the legal and common glosses of

word tokens contributed to student confidence in applying this approach outside the

classroom.

Finally, we introduce an electronic reference tool that can also serve as a repository of

vocabulary knowledge, serving simultaneously as a teaching and reference tool. The

teaching model and tools are used here to teach ESP vocabulary in the legal field but

should be adaptable to other ESP fields.

7. Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge that this research would not have been possible

if not for a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese Ministry of

Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, from March 2004 to April 2006.

We also would like to thank Mr. Shigeru Sasajima and Mr. Yasuhiro Ohzeki for their

feedback and support.

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8. Figure

<insert FIGURE 1 here>

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