Vol. 14 (2025)
Language and Law

Research Articles

Building the Australian Legislative Corpus 2023: Combatting Issues and Highlighting Applications of General Legislative Corpora

Published 21.02.2025

  • Emma Genovese

Emma Genovese
University of Technology Sydney

Abstract

This article introduces and details the construction of the Australian Legislative Corpus 2023 (‘ALC23’). The ALC23 includes relevant legislation from each Australian jurisdiction that was in force as at 30 June 2023, and is intended to act as a general corpus of a specialised nature. The article begins by providing a brief overview of corpus linguistic applications in the legal sphere, before summarising current legal corpora. Following this, the article details the composition of the ALC23, before moving to discuss how issues in construction were overcome. The article also notes potential applications of the ALC23, including a case study of how the word “gender” is used in the ALC23. The article concludes with some potential limitations that may be of note to both corpus linguists and legal scholars. Crucially, this article is written from the perspective of a legal scholar, which means that the creation, and use, of the ALC23 is intended to be made accessible to scholars who have a limited background in linguistic theory, method, and programming.

Cite as: Genovese, JLL 14 (2025), 30–62, DOI: 10.14762/jll.2025.030

Keywords

legal corpora, corpus linguistics, legal linguistics, law and language

PDF

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