Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 Introduction
1.1 Background and rationale
1.1.1 Rationale
The point of departure for this project was the belief that in order to improve post-
secondary English language teaching in Japan, university language programs should
adopt English for Specific Purposes (ESP) methods in lieu of the widespread general
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. in the field of ESP related to law studies.
With the increasing interest in English language teaching for law majors and other
students studying legal English, we decided to focus on 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, while almost all university
students use general English-Japanese dictionaries, law dictionaries in Japan offer only
definitions of legal technical words and their historical background. They lack examples
of how these words are used in context and do not offer explanations as to how general
words are used in a legal sense in legal documents.
ESP methodology is partly founded on the belief that language educators should
understand the context of both the L1 and the specialized subject matter. In 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.
Importantly, “The Law on the Maintenance of Public Security” was abolished and
political prisoners were released. It was proclaimed that Shintoism was to be separated
from the State” Oda (1992, p. 32). There were six basic characteristics of the new
Japanese Constitution:
1) The system of pre-war elites was abolished;
2) the Cabinet was constructed on the British model;
3) both houses of the Diet became fully elective;
4) the judiciary was made independent;
5) governors of prefectures became elected positions;
6) human rights were guaranteed to all.
The American influence of this new Constitution was multi-faceted and affected the
Japanese legal code in many areas: administrative law, three major labour laws, anti-
monopoly law, and economic law. Even so, “Major codes such as the Criminal Code,
Code of Civil Procedure and the Commercial Code were retained without any
significant amendment. In other words, a significant portion of Japanese law is still
influenced by the Prussian Code” Oda (1992, p. 33). In this way Japanese law code
became a unique blend of elements of both civil law as well as common law. “Japan
freely adopted ideas and habits from foreign civilizations. The ideas took root in
Japanese soil and once removed (from) their native cultural surroundings, they have
developed and been transformed into something quite different from the original” Noda
(1976, p. 5).
Today, the main sources of law in Japan include the Constitution (kempo), acts of the
Diet (horitsu), orders, mandates, fiats, statutory instruments (meirei), local ordinances
(jorei), treaties (joyaku), rules of court (saibanho kisoku), customs (kanshu), judicial
4
Swales further developed this concept in Other Floors, Other Voices: A Textography of
a Small University Building (1998), stating that “the discourse community owns the
genre.” This viewpoint indicates the importance of considering not only the texts
themselves but also of considering the discourse community using these texts.
Long and Robinson (1998, p. 23) state that “focus on form often consists of an
occasional shift of attention to linguistic code features—by the teacher and/or one or
more students—triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production.”
In 2002, Long presented a lecture on “Focus on form in classroom SLA” at the Kansai
University Institute of Foreign Language Education and Research and proposed a task-
based syllabus for this:
5
Interestingly, he did not refer at all to ESP. When asked about this after the lecture, he
stated that ESP was about “texts” alone. Unfortunately, this is a frequent
misunderstanding about ESP but the procedure he proposed for building a syllabus
shows that research in classroom learning supports the validity of the ESP approach of
needs analyses to identify target tasks.
corpus tools. For the technical elements, style manuals and instructions to authors are
helpful. For the phonological, dictionaries and online dictionaries with sound can be
referred to.
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
1999, 2001a). This has long been known 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)
The dictionary meanings are not very helpful for a second-language learner and can, in
fact, be confusing.
alien
ADJECTIVE: 1. Owing political allegiance to another country or
government; foreign: alien residents. 2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or
constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. See
synonyms at foreign. 3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature:
emotions alien to her temperament.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
alien
NOUN:1. An unnaturalized foreign resident of a country. Also called
noncitizen. 2. A person from another and very different family, people, or place.
3. A person who is not included in a group; an outsider. 4. A creature from outer
space: science fiction about an invasion of aliens. 5. Ecology An organism,
especially a plant or animal, that occurs in or is naturalized in a region to which
it is not native.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
foreign/foreigner
ADJECTIVE:1. Owing political allegiance to another country or
government; foreign: alien residents. 2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or
constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. See
synonyms at foreign. 3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature:
emotions alien to her temperament.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
foreign/foreigner
NOUN:1. An unnaturalized foreign resident of a country. Also called
noncitizen. 2. A person from another and very different family, people, or place.
3. A person who is not included in a group; an outsider. 4. A creature from outer
space: science fiction about an invasion of aliens. 5. Ecology An organism,
especially a plant or animal, that occurs in or is naturalized in a region to which
it is not native.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
8
immigrant
NOUN:1. A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in
another. 2. A plant or animal that establishes itself in an area where it previously
did not exist. ADJECTIVE:Of or relating to immigrants or the act of
immigrating.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
stranger
NOUN:1. One who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. 2. A
foreigner, newcomer, or outsider. 3. One who is unaccustomed to or
unacquainted with something specified; a novice: a stranger to our language;
no stranger to hardship. 4. A visitor or guest. 5. Law One that is neither privy
nor party to a title, act, or contract.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000)
Examination of the 900 US constitutional cases being considered in this study reveals
that all of these terms are used. In order to help disambiguate their nuances and uses,
we suggest that referring to the corpus for authentic examples can be very useful and
revealing. The learners can be guided toward noticing frequent collocates and
encouraged to classify the observations that they make from the data such as presented
below.
This 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 evidence
the new evidence
of_the new evidence
light_of_the new evidence
the suppressed evidence
the additional evidence
the mitigating evidence
the undisclosed evidence
in_light_of_the new evidence
of_the historical evidence
the only evidence
the physical evidence
of_the evidence
the record evidence
of_the suppressed evidence
the available evidence
the mitigation evidence
in_the_light_of_the new evidence
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
58 evidence_of_a 30 of_evidence_and
55 by_clear_and_convincing_evidence 28 by_evidence
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1.3.8 Summary
In sum, ESP is based on consideration of how communication is done among members
of a discourse community. ESP learners are potential or even novice community
participants who should be empowered with knowledge of the principles of professional
communication and useful self-access tools. The genre analysis and corpus linguistics
examples described above should be conducive to autonomous and continual learning
by adult, mature learners with professional or occupational needs. An OCHA discovery
learning approach should be particularly useful for continuing education that can
address evolving needs with adaptive strategies.
pedagogical projects that are truly collaborative in nature where subject area
professionals join forces with LSP expert (see, eg., Author, et al. 2004). Of course this is
not a limitation of reference materials alone. Also, in both the second language and
specialized subject classrooms, teaching methodologies may be excellent at guiding
students in approaching the analysis of technical language in specialized texts but often
with the result that students ignore the frequent general meanings glossed in these same
texts. The result can be errors of language choice, as Author (2001, p. 181-3) found
with, for example, “trial” and “try” in his examination of lexis in legal texts.
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 that helps in making correct language choices. First, using the
sentence-level syntax of the genre text as a key to interpreting “the recurring
communicative event” (Author 2001a), the following steps are introduced to learners as
an aid to help them narrow down semantic choices and arrive at meanings. After
teaching students these steps they are encouraged to apply this same OCHA approach
autonomously in self-study.
Strategic Steps:
1) Observe the form features, in this case lexical. Identify key words in the sentence
that aid in clarification.
2) Classify these features. Is a particular key word a noun or verb?
3) Hypothesize about the usage. For example, if it is a verb, a) what preposition
follows the verb, and what is the object of the preposition? (e.g., ‘charged with
power’, ‘charged with murder’), or b) what is the subject and object of the verb?
And 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? B)
What is the pronoun referent?
4) Applying what they have considered, students are then encouraged 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 for students to document the
development and invention of their own new strategies.
examples of usage found in the corpus of USCC we compiled. The word token itself as
well as the usage has been highlighted.
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
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
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
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
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,
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
2.1.5 Discussion
In actual classroom application the strategy and tasks presented above worked well,
with university students quickly grasping the OCHA approach and strategic steps for
completing the tasks. The legal and common glosses of the word token were noticed
and there was a certain confidence among students in applying this approach on their
own when tackling texts outside the classroom. That being said, there were definite
limitations that need to be considered for more effective implication of this strategy.
One challenge was the fact that there was no Japanese translation built into either the
strategy or the tasks themselves. This proved to be a stumbling block. We intend to
include Japanese glosses in future applications. Also, although clarification of the word
token was accomplished with little fanfare, we focused students’ attention almost
entirely on the specific instances of language use ignoring the larger contextual clues in
the USCC themselves. There is much to be said for providing students with the
individual cases in their entirety, as well as time to read and discuss them, in order to
flesh out the “sociorhetorical situation” (Swales, 1990, p. 76) and genre—that is,
understanding the communicative event along with its community of “communicators”
and “receivers” (Author, 2001a, p. 39).
Figure 1 below outlines diagrammatically this reference tool, an electronic “ESP Law
Dictionary for Japanese Students.” Eventually this will be available in a handy online
format as well, and expanded to include additional specialized subjects other than the
language of law.
3 Conclusion
This paper 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 applications in ESP. We used legal vocabulary from a corpus of US
Constitutional Cases from the United States which we analyzed for word meanings,
grammatical features, collocational patterns and frequently occurring specific discoursal
features. After discussing in some detail the theoretical foundations of this research, we
explained how law dictionaries often lack 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 the development of a pedagogic approach and accompanying
reference tool to better identify for students the differences in the usage of words in
general and specific contexts as well as to help them find collocations common to field-
specific corpora. To this end we are currently preparing an electronic reference tool for
law students that will help to address the issues we have raised. This work lays the basis
for developing effective teaching and reference materials that are founded upon
principles from the fields of corpus linguistics and language for specific purposes.
Because of the theoretical underpinnings of our model, we fully expect a similar one
can be applied fruitfully to other fields of language for specific/special purposes.
4 Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge that this research would not have been possible
if not for a generous 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.
20
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