Law Commons^™

Adding Context And Constraint To Corpus Linguistics, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Brooklyn Law Review

Corpus linguistics presents an exciting tool for improving interpretation of documentary language. But it would be a mistake to overvalue the tool or to use it as grounds for ejecting consideration of other data from the interpretative task. While properly operationalized corpus linguistics analysis represents an advancement over traditional textualism, it remains subject to the same problems that plague excessively rigid textualism that refuses to give consideration to contextual evidence of meaning. To be most effective in achieving accurate and just interpretative results, corpus linguistics, like traditional reading of documentary language, requires context. This includes not only the context of …