Using Corpus Linguistics as a Tool in Legal Interpretation

Abstract

Over the past decade, the application of corpus linguistics in legal interpretation has received attention from a group of scholars that engage in legal academics and linguistics. When the law takes into account the distribution of language usage, the application of corpus linguistics can help with addressing legal challenges. Before concluding that corpus analysis is optimally persuasive, the study addresses four difficulties that need to be addressed: The distribution of language use among a certain community must be the primary focus of the legal problem; Second, what constitutes a "ordinary" reading should be determined by the court; Thirdly, while searching a corpus to determine a term's usual meaning, one must predetermine what to look for; Fourth, there are a variety of reasons that a given meaning may turn up weak in a corpus search, and they should be recognized. Through analysis, this paper finds that though drawing on academic research and the experience of foreign judicial practice, Chinese scholars can enrich the research methods of the interdisciplinary field of law and linguistics, and provide inspiration for the nascent movement and the development of judicial practice.