Context is a notion that is commonly invoked in many linguistic studies, either with very general reference or, more specifically, in the light of one of a number of research approaches which assign distinct definitions to context, ranging from factors that can be recovered from a text, through social parameters serving as an index for the appropriation of discursive performance, to factors that bring texts into being and give them meaning. This exploratory and descriptive research problematises the notion of context specifically on the grounds of English/Polish translation of corporate documentation processed in company registration proceedings, touching upon factors that are presumed to be discursively relevant in this communicative situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of the sociocultural approach and it adopts the parallel corpus methodology. The author discusses the concept of context on the ground of legal communication and secondarily presents a corpus-based description of the context categories that are idiosyncratic and potentially discursively relevant for the said communicative situation in the cross-linguistic perspective. The contextual variation is tested for its capacity to affect translation performance. The results reveal specific tendencies as regards the distribution patterns in the values corresponding to the investigated context categories. They point to some divergencies in translation output caused by the source text variantivity and they pave the way and directions for further research. Already at this stage the findings may have significant pedagogical value and they constitute a solid starting point for sociolinguistic research on discourse variantivity.

The paper presents findings gathered in an exploratory, descriptive, corpus-based analysis of a parallel corpus composed of English corporate documents and their translations into Polish with regard to the frequency-related, binary strategy distribution pattern. In general, the author posits a distinctiveness of interlingual communication in the domain of law, as delineated by the institutional and disciplinary framework. The material extracted from the corpus and studied for its generic features (author, forthcoming-a) points to the hermetic character of corporate written communication in English. The thesis to be verified is whether there are any tendencies in the distribution of the translation strategies in the corpus texts. The research question was operationalised via coding the corpus extracts according to the binary strategy division scheme. Further, the data have been discussed in reference to the sociocultural background of the communicative situation covered under the analysis in order to account for the translators' motivation.

The discussion presented in the paper is an attempt to set out the market-oriented ground for teaching legal translation in the court setting. The postulate is that information about the prevalent types of civil cases involving translation and the patterns as regards dominating textual genres in various categories of court cases can make the didactic process in the said domain more effective, market-oriented and finally enhance the rhetorical and pragmatic expertise of students and translators operating in the said field. In order to collect the necessary data the author conducted a search of court files, compiled a corpus of the relevant texts and performed statistical analysis. The relevant material was selected on the basis od being qualified as involving a foreign element, whichin most general termsimplies the linguistic processing of the documents in translation 2 . The data were analysed statistically with the intention to determine the patterns related to the directionality of translation, instituional distribution of the translation process, and the genre scheme. The local dimension as regards the framework of the research approach which underlies the study is based on the assumptions of the GENTT research group on multilingual management and translation of court documents 3 .

The paper examines the complexity of legal communication in English in the context of its stylistic variantivity. The research examines whether the variable of genre and selected sociolinguistic factors affect the grammar of legal texts, and, specifically the quantitative distribution of verbal structures. The analysis fits in the paradigmatic approach to generic and sociolinguistic studies, where the distribution of discrete units is presented in quantitative terms. The operationalisation of the research involved the identification of the relevant linguistic material in the corpus, its statistical processing, and conducting relevant R analysis to determine potential correlations. The findings showed that the legal texts making up the corpus were not stylistically homogenous; the varied provenance of the source texts (from a diatopic and diachronic perspective, and in terms of genre profile) affected the stylistic structure/grammar of the texts; the frequency distribution of same grammatical categories tended to be discriminative for various categories of texts. The research makes a contribution through addressing legal communication within the realm of secondary genres that are underrepresented in legilinguistic studies, constituting a significant yet problematic domain from an intra-and inter-linguistic perspective. The findings obtained in the analysis and patterns are of practical use in multinational , institutional environments, where English is used as a lingua franca in corporate communication. Moreover, the conclusions drawn provide a foundation for studies on legal translation in professional settings, including the didactic perspective.

The paper aims at describing the findings and conclusions formulated in the analysis of the authorship factor in legal discourse. It is hypothesised that verbal structures show systemically varied distribution across legal discourse and the relevant distinctions run through the authorship categories. When it comes to the aim of the research it draws on the tradition of sociolinguistic methodology targeting issues related to language variation which follows the basic assumptions of functional grammar. From the point of view of the material covered by the analysis it contributes to the research on legal discourse and specifically on its specialised domain referred to as corporate, company or business discourse. It provides additional empirical data pointing to the non-homogeneity of the legal style and formal distinctions originating from rich contextual background. The study is conducted on the material of a custom-designed corpus of English legal texts, classified as secondary genres. Methodologically, the study makes use of the tenets of supervised search of digitalised corpora and automatic data extraction based on discrete units, subsequent identification of recurring longer contiguous and/or non-contiguous sequences, if any, built around the axis of specific verbal structures and finally qualitative comparative analysis (characterisation) of the material. The discussion presents sample data and focuses on the most salient categories, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The inductive approach confirms the formal divergencies in the communicative situation covered by the analysis. The findings encapsulate patterns and tendencies in the quantitative distribution of verbal structures depending on the authorship category. It may be concluded that authorship is a factor delineating distinctions as regards (i) the repertoire of grammatical instruments exploited (verbal structures), which contributes to the specific stylistic profile of given authors. This shows that the thesis posed is verified positively and the study shows further, more detailed distinctions running through groups of subcategories distinguished within the authorship categories specified upon the start of the research.