Law Meets Linguistics: Detecting Gender-Based Stereotypes through Corpus-Based Analysis in the GenDJus Project
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/milanlawreview/31401Parole chiave:
stereotipi di genere, approcci queer femministi, diritti umani, linguistica dei corporaAbstract
The gendered implications of judicial narratives have been investigated in different fields. The GenDJus project aims at discovering and examining gender-based prejudices, stereotypes and biases in judicial discourses. As a joint effort between lawyers and linguists, the project has relied on corpus linguistics as a method to complement feminist queer legal approaches to human rights. Rather than focussing on the substantial outcomes of the project, this paper presents one of the virtuous effects of GenDJus as an interdisciplinary endeavour. This is the lawyers’ curiosity of learning linguistics-specific tools, such as the online platform NoSketch Engine. This system interrogates the corpus, a pre-established collection of legal texts, through different functions that help the researcher identify non-obvious gender-related meanings and assumptions in the judges’ voices. Although training in (corpus) linguistics optimises the potential of NoSketch Engine, this can be used by lawyers as an additional instrument to the critical and/or doctrinal analysis to (i) make their informed choices as to the texts most suitable for subsequent close reading; (ii) identify prejudices, stereotypes and biases, including judicial silences; and eventually (iii) articulate significant conclusions as to the way in which courts name and contest such prejudices, stereotypes and biases.
Downloads
Riferimenti bibliografici
P. Baker, Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2010
P. Baker, Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, Continuum, London, 2006
P. Baker and E. Levon, Picking The Right Cherries? A Comparison Of Corpus-Based and Qualitative Analyses of News Articles about Masculinity, in Discourse & Communication, 2015, vol. 9, p. 221-236
J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge, 1990
K. Bartlett, Feminist Legal Methods, in Harvard Law Review, 1990, vol. 103, p. 829-888
D. Buss and A.S. Manji (eds.), International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches, Hart, Oxford, 2005
H. Charlesworth, C. Chinkin and S. Wright, Feminist Approaches to International Law, in American Journal of International Law, 1991, vol. 85, p. 613-645
L. Cheng and D. Machin, The Law and Critical Discourse Studies, in Critical Discourse Studies, 2022, vol. 20, p. 243-255
R. Collier, Masculinities, Law, and Personal Life: Towards a New Framework for Understanding Men, Law, and Gender, in Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, 2010, vol. 33, p. 431-475
R. Connell, Which Way Is Up? Essays on Sex, Class, and Culture, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (adopted 18 December 1979, entered into force 3 September 1981) 1249 UNTS 13.
B. Cossman, Gender Performance, Sexual Subjects and International Law, in Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, 2002, vol. 15, p. 281–296
B. Cossman, Queering Queer Legal Studies: An Unreconstructed Ode to Eve Sedgwick (and Others), in Critical Analysis of Law, 2019, vol. 6, p. 23-38
S. Cusack and R. Cook, Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2011
C. Danisi and G. Pontrandolfo (eds.), Prejudice, Stereotypes and Bias in Sexual, Reproductive and Parental Rights: Linguistic and Legal Implications of Gendered Discourses in International Judicial Spaces, Palgrave Macmillan, London [forthcoming]
M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité: La volonté de savoir. Paris, Gallimard, 1976
GenDJus, ‘Case Law’
GenDJus, ‘Corpus’
GenDJus, ‘Research Outputs’
GenDJus, ‘Rights and Prejudice: Linguistic and Legal Implications of Gendered Discourses in Judicial Spaces (GenDJus)’
G. Gilleri, Sex, Gender, and International Human Rights Law: Contesting Binaries, Routledge, London and New York, 2024
G. Gilleri and E. Miyamoto, Broadening Protections? The European Court of Human Rights' Discourse on Gender-Based Violence against Trans and Intersex Persons, in The Italian Review of International and Comparative Law, 2025, vol. 2, p. 331-362
G. Gilleri, E. Miyamoto and C. Sarni, Methodology and Theoretical Framework, in C. Danisi and P. Pontrandolfo (eds.), Prejudice, Stereotypes and Bias in Sexual, Reproductive and Parental Rights: Linguistic and Legal Implications of Gendered Discourses in International Judicial Spaces, Palgrave Macmillan, London [forthcoming]
J. E. Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008
V. Hamzić, The Case of ‘Queer Muslims’: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in International Human Rights Law and Muslim Legal and Social Ethos, in Human Rights Law Review, 2011, vol. 11, p. 237-274
G. Heathcote, Feminist Dialogues on International Law: Successes, Tensions, Futures, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019
A. Kilgarriff, V. Baisa, J. Bušta, M. Jakubíček, V. Kovář, J. Michelfeit, P. Rychlý, and V. Suchomel, The Sketch Engine: Ten Years On, in Lexicography, 2014, vol. 1, p. 7-36
J. Lacan, Il Seminario. Libro II: L’io nella teoria di Freud e nella tecnica della psicoanalisi (1954–1955), Einaudi, Milan, 2006
J. Lacan, Joyce e Il Sintomo, in A. Di Ciaccia (ed.), Altri scritti, Einaudi, Milan, 2013
Lexical Computing, ‘Sketch Engine’
M. Lugones, The Coloniality of Gender, in W. Harcourt (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development: Critical Engagements in Feminist Theory and Practice, Springer, New York, 2016
T. McEnery and A. Wilson, Corpus Linguistics. An Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2001
C. Mohanty, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, in Feminist Review, 1988, vol. 30, p. 61-88
N. Naffine and R. Owens, Sexing the Subject of Law, LBC Information Services, North Ryde, NSW, 1997
C. O’Hara and T.P. Paige (eds.), Queer Encounters with International Law: Lives, Communities, Subjectivities, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2024
D. Otto, Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity, in D. Otto (ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks, Routledge, London and New York, 2018, p. 1-12
D. Otto, Between Pleasure and Danger: Lesbian Human Rights, in European Human Rights Law Review, 2014, vol. 6, p. 618-628
D. Otto, International Human Rights Law: Towards Rethinking Sex/Gender Dualism and Asymmetry, in M. Davies and V. Munro (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Feminist Legal Theory, Ashgate, Farnham, 2013, p. 197-214
D. Otto, Disconcerting ‘Masculinities’: Reinventing the Gendered Subject(s) of International Human Rights Law, in A. Manji and D. Buss (eds.), International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches, Hart, Oxford, 2005, p. 105-129
O. Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997
A. Partington, A. Duguid and C. Taylor, Patterns and Meanings in Discourse. Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2013
B. Pirker and J. Smolka, International Law and Linguistics: Pieces of an Interdisciplinary Puzzle, in Journal of International Dispute Settlement, 2020, vol. 11, p. 501-521
G. Pontrandolfo and C. Danisi, Theoretical and Methodological Challenges of Interdisciplinary Legal-Linguistic Research: Reflections from the GenDJus Project, in S. Goźdź-Roszkowski and G. Pontrandolfo (eds.), In the Minds of Judges. Argumentative Discourse at the Intersection of Law and Language, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, 2025, p. 257-279
G. Pontrandolfo and G. Gilleri, The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in C. Danisi and G. Pontrandolfo (eds.), Prejudice, Stereotypes and Bias in Sexual, Reproductive and Parental Rights: Linguistic and Legal Implications of Gendered Discourses in International Judicial Spaces, Palgrave Macmillan, London [forthcoming]
G. Pontrandolfo, C. Danisi, G. Gilleri, E. Miyamoto and C. Sarni, ‘The GenDJus Corpus [Data Set]’, The GenDJus Project - PRIN 2022 PNRR, 2024, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14761912
W.D. Popkin, Law and Linguistics: Is There Common Ground?, in Washington University Law Review, 1995, vol. 73, 1043-1045
R. Rao, Queer Questions, in International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 16, 2014, p. 199-217
M. Reisigl and R. Wodak, The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), in Methods of Discourse Studies, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer, Methods of Discourse Studies, 3rd edition, London, Sage, 2016, p. 23-61
Sketch Engine, ’What is Sketch Engine?’
P. Rychlý, Manatee/Bonito - A Modular Corpus Manager, in P. Sojka and A. Horák (eds.), Proceedings of Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing, 2007, p. 65-70
C. Smart, The Woman of Legal Discourse, in Social and Legal Studies, 1992, vol. 1, p. 29-44
T. van Dijk, Critical Discourse Studies: A Sociocognitive Approach, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of Discourse Studies, 3rd edn, Sage, London, 2016, p. 62-85
T. van Dijk, Discourse and Power, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008
T. van Dijk, Critical Discourse Analysis, in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H.E. Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Blackwell, Oxford, 2001, pp. 352-337
T. van Dijk, Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis, in Discourse & Society, 1993, vol. 4, p. 249-282
R. Wodak and M. Meyer, Methods of Discourse Studies, 3rd edition, London, Sage, 2016
Dowloads
Pubblicato
Come citare
Fascicolo
Sezione
Licenza
Copyright (c) 2026 Giovanna Gilleri
Questo lavoro è fornito con la licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.
