Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

158Portuguese texts have about 6,500 words while the Canadian texts have about 12,000words, i.e. the Canadian texts are twice as long as the Portuguese texts. The Portuguesetexts were published between July 2009 and December 2009, while the Canadian texts werepublished between January 2007 and December 2009.Table 11. Features of the corpus used in the researchPortuguesesubcorpusComparable corpusEnglishsubcorpusTotalNumber of words 2,574,335 2,220,707 4,795,042Number of texts 397 181 578Average number of words per text 6480 12270 9375Dates of textsJuly 2009 –December 20092009, 2008,2007January 2007 –December 2009The following sections characterize the Portuguese and Canadian texts based on thefollowing features: the functions of the texts, the institutional context in which they wereproduced, the experts who produced them, the macrostructure and the content. Thecomparison of these characteristics will prove that the Portuguese and Canadian textsbelong to the same legal genre at the same time it provides arguments that explain theexistence of the aforementioned differences.4.1.2. The Portuguese judgmentsThe Portuguese corpus consists of authentic texts called acórdãos. The term derives fromACORDAM, the third person plural of the verb acordar (Eng. to agree), used by the judgesat the beginning and at the end of the judgments to manifest their agreement on the decisionthey reach. Acórdão differs from sentença in that a sentença is a decision reached by onejudge working in lower courts (the distinction between acórdão and sentença is also valid