Contrastive Study of International Commercial Arbitration Awards and Judgments: Intertextuality through Metadiscourse in action (Versión aceptada)

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which the use of hedges and boosters can shed light on the phenomena of hybridization 2 and colonization of arbitration discourse by litigation practices and explore the motivations for such a process. Drawing on Fairclough’s notion of intertextuality and Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse framework, we examine more specifically how judges and arbitrators use hedges and boosters as interactional resources to adopt a stance on both their propositions and their audience and to express doubt and certainty in the negotiation of claims made. The central concern of the chapter is how texts (or rather judges and arbitrators as writers) negotiate past decisions, integrate these texts into their own texts and align themselves with these past decisions. Furthermore, we will argue that legal reasoning and interpretation is not primarily and exclusively an exercise of conclusive logic leading to inevitable outcomes, as claimed by traditional legal theory, but that legal reasoning and interpretation is an exercise in inter-subjective positioning and making choices, although not totally unrestricted choices.