Les collocations verbales dans le discours juridique : de la terminologie vers la phraséologie

Analyzing the legal field, Darbelnet (1979) emphasized that the two elements of the legal discourse of equal importance for the meaning of the message are the terminology and word order. On the same line of thought, Cornu deals with compounding as a privileged means of word-formation in legal terminology, defining it as "the formation of a significant new entity from preexisting terms with their own individuality" (1990: 171). Cornu does not mention collocations, but according to Giráldez (2010: 6), the criteria established by Cornu for defining "compounds" are similar to those established by other authors for collocations. According to González Rey (2002: 83), collocations are sequences of fixed words, placed in co-occurrence, in a binary structure and according to a different semiotic taxonomy status. One of the two lexemes is the base or the collocator, the other is the collocative. The semantic value of the base remains unchanged, while the collocative, generally, receives a particular meaning. Actually, collocations consist of two lexical components of almost equal importance. In the case of verbal collocations, we identified two subclasses: lexical collocations, which have a nominal base to specify the list of verbal collocatives (the nominal base collocates with the following co -occurrents: engager / intenter / exercer / introduire / former une action), and conceptual collocations, which starts from a verb to identify what Lerat (2008) calls "classes of objects" (the verb délivrer collocates with the nominal bases belonging to the conceptual class : délivrer un certificat / un permis / une attestation / un brevet / une copie (d’acte juridique)/ une expédition/ un mandat (d’arrêt, d’amener, etc.) / un passeport). Considering the legal discourse as "the locus of phrasem understanding", our paper begins with the definition and the typology of verbal collocations (lexical collocations vs. conceptual collocations). Then, we focus our pragmatic-discursive analysis exclusively at the level of conceptual verbal collocations. In fact, we pursue two objectives: (1) to link the study of terminology to phraseology through the passage of specialized terms in conceptual verbal collocations and (2) to study the pragmatic-discursive role of conceptual verbal collocations as a unity factor of legal discourse.