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Dimensions of variation across institutional legal and administrative registers

An MDA analysis of the Polish Eurolect and the national variety

ORCiD logo with link | University of Warsaw
ORCiD logo with link | University of Warsaw
ORCiD logo with link | University of Warsaw
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 19 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.25126.bie
Abstract
This study applies full Multidimensional Analysis (MDA) to examine linguistic variation in the Polish Eurolect — a hybrid variety shaped by translation and institutional constraints within the European Union — by comparing it to the national variety. Using a corpus of key institutional registers (legal acts, judgments, administrative reports, and citizen-oriented websites), we identify four dimensions of variation: Argumentative vs Informational, Engaged Instruction vs Distanced Authority, Prescriptive vs Narrative, and Lexical Richness. The findings reveal notable differences between how supranational and national institutions communicate. EU legal acts and judgments show greater prescriptiveness, legal referencing, and argumentative structuring compared to their Polish counterparts. EU websites have less engagement and explanatory strategies while EU reports favour a less distanced style. The findings map variation and group institutional registers, thereby visualizing similarities and differences between supranational and national institutional communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Research into Eurolects
    • 1.2Multidimensional analysis (MDA)
  • 2.Study design
    • 2.1Corpus design: Registers and their situational contexts
    • 2.2Corpus preparation
    • 2.3Linguistic variables
    • 2.4MDA method
  • 3.MDA results and discussion
    • 3.1Dimension 1: Argumentative vs Informational
    • 3.2Dimension 2: Engaged instruction vs distanced authority
    • 3.3Dimension 3: Prescriptive vs narrative
    • 3.4Dimension 4: Lexical richness
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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