Re-contextualizing specialized English: from legislation to business

The paper investigates the processes of re-contextualization in specialized English when moving from the fields of legislation to business. Using a corpus consisting of E.U. and U.K. legislative documents, and the websites of The Big Six Energy Suppliers in the U.K, the author tracks how the language of the regulation for the market in energy and electricity is re-written into the business language of corporations. Adopting a quantitative methodology focused in the main on phraseology, and a qualitative framework focusing on intertextuality and interdiscursivity, the author compares the flow of concepts and principles through these different genres and their transfer across contexts with different interlocutors and participants.