Los marcadores discursivos como rasgo distintivo de los textos del ámbito de las ciencias jurídicas en lengua vasca: Aproximación estadística con proyección jurilingüística

Abstract

This paper presents a research project which analyses the frequency, distribution and patterning of discourse markers. The results point to substantially different tendencies: a) in texts in the domain of legal studies, in comparison to those found in journalistic, literary, humanities or science texts; b) in legal texts in comparison to academic law texts; c) in texts produced by different bodies currently involved in the development of Basque legal prose in comparison to each other. In its methodology the study is quantitative, and its findings appear to confirm its initial hypotheses. One of these is that frequencies of use seem to correlate clearly and consistently with the grade of specialization and the thematic domain of the texts. Another hypothesis states that the differences are highly significant in the case of the texts in the domain of legal studies, which seems to indicate that the frequency of use of makers shows relevant differences at register and genre level configurations between academic and legislative texts. Lastly, in the matter of the choice and frequency of discourse markers there seems to be a trend towards a common legislative style, shared by the various agencies and institutions involved in translating legal texts to Basque. This is encouraging, given the sociolinguistic situation of the Basque language in this area.