Nominalization in legal discourse: A systemic functional analysis = Danh hóa trong văn bản luật pháp: Phân tích theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống. M.A. Thesis Linguistics: 60 22 15

Abstract

Nominalization is a prevalent linguistic phenomenon in English, especially in written English. As a universal characteristic of human language, nominalization is always an interesting subject for linguists. Basing on the theory of functional grammar as developed by Halliday and some other systemic linguists, this thesis aims at investigating how nominalization is realized in legal discourse by taking into account the nature, functions and classification of nominalization as well as typical characteristics of English legal discourse. This thesis is conducted on the prescriptive legal text: The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) by using theory of systemic functional grammar with both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that nominalization is a prominent feature in legal discourses. It occurs about once every 10 words. Nominalization is created mostly by the drift from process into Thing in which the most frequently used form is the category of deverbal nominalization. With a large amount of nominalization realized as goal, complement and rheme in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions, nominalization makes the text more lengthy, complex, objective, concise, powerful and cohesive