Abstract

This corpus-based study investigates variation in the use of multiword terms understood as depositories of specialised knowledge in a system of genres (third-party interventions, judicial opinions, legal summaries, press releases, blogs and a judgment) revolving around the European Court of Human Rights case Parrillo v. Italy. The study framework combines Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis to compare distributional patterns of legal and bioethical multiword terms across the six genres as well as the linguistic representation of the main concept of embryo. The results provide confirmatory evidence of diaphasic variation involving, first, variation in terminological rigour depending on institutional stratification, and, second, "strategic" variation introduced in persuasive genres to enhance a potential reading key.