Characterizing Legal Stylistics with a TXM textometric tool

Abstract

Textometry tools can be used to characterize specialized varieties of English, such as Legal English. Our goal is to use the TXM textometry tool (Heiden et al., 2010) on Sales and Purchase Agreements (SPAs) to show agreements are drafted following a rigid structure, either in their form and shape (macrostructure) or their content (microstructure). We assume that the choice of words (Weisberg, 2014), and the construction of sentences or paragraphs [in agreements] shape how agreements are written and comprise the deal, that is, what is being sold. We hypothesize that there exists legal stylistics based on structural features. We built a corpus comprising Sales and Purchase Agreements of different sizes and topics to which the TXM tool was applied: parts of speech tagging help single out structure, linking words, word variety, frequencies, and writing routines. All descriptive details resulting from our implementation build legal stylistics that thus helps legal professionals, translators, teachers or clients better understand and draft agreements.