Modal Adverbs of Certainty in EU Legal Discourse: A Parallel Corpus Approach

Magdalena Szczyrbak

Abstract Modal adverbs of certainty are commonly found in argumentative writing, where they operate as stance markers and engagement devices guiding the readers towards the author’s intended interpretation. Such is also the case with legal opinions which abound in instances of explicit authorial marking, although, naturally, author visibility levels vary from language to language. This chapter examines the use of modal adverbs of certainty in judicial argumentation as attested by the English and Polish versions of the Opinions of Advocates General which represent EU legal discourse. To this end, a parallel corpus approach is used to explore “prototypical” meanings and context-dependent renderings of selected English adverbs in the Polish language and to investigate the effect that omissions of these adverbs have on the argumentative force of the translated texts. The study not only shows conventional and ad hoc meanings of the adverbs analysed, but also reveals differences between the author visibility levels and the rhetorical force of the original English texts and that of their translated Polish equivalents.

Keywords EU legal discourse • Judicial opinions • Legal argumentation • Modal adverbs • Parallel corpora • Stance