Noun that-complement clauses and the expression of stance in the English-French bilingual corpus of the Acq uis Communautaire. Legalese as an “objective” genre.

The present article aims to scrutinise the notion of noun that-complement clauses that are preceded by what is referred to as ʽthe head nounʼ in the English linguistic terminology, and as ʽnom recteurʼ in the French linguistic terminology. Head nouns represent a grammatical way of expressing the attitude of the drafters of legal documents. The hypothesis is that despite the well-known, general belief concerning the objective nature of the legal language, in the documents of the European Union, there are linguistic means, such as the above-mentioned head nouns, as well as modal verbs, moods and the distinctive use of articles, which question the desired objectivity and impartiality of legal texts. From a methodological point of view, the article is based on the use of an electronic bilingual corpus called the Acquis Communautaire which contains texts in both languages, English and French. The corpus is partially linguistically annotated. All examples that we provide as a means of illustration of linguistic phenomena are taken from this specific corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]