Epistemic modality in court judgments: A corpus-driven comparison of civil cases in Hong Kong and Scotland

Epistemic modality in English-medium medical research articles: A systemic functional perspective

“…Modal commitment and responsibility can be difficult enough for native speakers to understand and master, (Cheng & Cheng, 2014), but for non-native speaking (NNS) academic writers preparing academic articles they pose a significant challenge due to multiplicity of meaning and complexity of functions. Studies have shown that in academic writing, NNS writers tend to employ fewer modal expressions and a relatively narrow range of linguistic devices, thus potentially leading to relatively inappropriate (usually more categorical) assertions (Chen, 2010;Gabrielatos & McEnery, 2005;Hyland & Milton, 1997).…”

Lexical Bundles in Contract Law Texts: A Corpus-Based Exploration and Implications for Legal Education

“…Over the past few years, there has been a significant amount of research on topics related to the legal discourse from an ESP perspective. While the study of Vass (2017) focuses on verb hedges in a one-million corpus of journal articles, supreme court agreements and supreme court disagreements, thus concluding that lexical verbs serving a hedging function are more pervasive in journal articles than in the other two genres, the research by Cheng and Cheng (2014) attempts to investigate epistemic modality in a corpus of civil cases in Hong Kong and Scotland, revealing no differences between the two legal systems with respect to the distribution of epistemic expressions serving to signal a degree of probability and possibility. In a survey of existing pedagogical resources relevant to legal education, Candlin, Bhatia, and Jensen (2002) conclude that the writing materials available for the students on how to approach legal prose are not fulfilling a clear pedagogical purpose, thus failing to meet the learner's writing needs, ignoring advances in linguistics theory and practice and are mainly delivered in an inaccessible manner.…”

Defamation case law in Hong Kong: A corpus-based study

“…The approach to meaning is concerned with how to determine the meaning of words or statements in defamatory dispute cases (e.g., Appellate Court overruled the trial court on the application of the law to some of the allegedly defamatory statements, Nicholson (2000: 32) notes that it is correct, according to the traditional English approach to defamation cases, to determine the "natural and ordinary" meaning of the words. However, Nicholson (2000: 55) also notices that there is not always just one "natural and ordinary" meaning of the words, because the same words may be understood differently by "ordinary persons," given the context and circumstances; similarly, Cheng and Cheng (2014) have noted that legal interpretation is a socio-semiotic enterprise. In the High Court of Hong Kong on a trial of defamation, 2 it was heard that the Plaintiff, relying "solely on the natural and ordinary meaning of the words" in a paragraph (Paragraph 2), objected to the words.…”

“…This study used the method of concgramming (Cheng and Cheng 2014;Cheng et al 2006Cheng et al , 2009Greaves 2009;Greaves and Warren 2007) to identify both word co-selections and phraseological variation in the corpus of reported defamation cases in Hong Kong. The phraseological lexical engine ConcGram 1.0 (Greaves 2009) was used.…”