Litigational Influence on Arbitration Discourse

In the last few decades, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) – in the forms of arbitration, conciliation and mediation – has been increasingly adopted in trade and commerce to resolve conflicts. As this method of settling commercial disputes is commonly considered an efficient, economical and effective alternative to litigation, the language used in arbitration documents is usually deemed to differ from that of litigation texts. However, in recent years, there has been a narrowing between the two practices as litigation processes and procedures have increasingly been seen to influence arbitration practices. Drawing on documentary data, the paper investigates the extent to which the integrity of arbitration discourse is maintained in the Italian context, pointing out the phenomena of contamination by litigation practices and exploring the motivations for such an interdiscursive process. An additional issue investigated concerns the relationship between the professional identity of the arbitrators and the kind of language used in their texts; the analysis focuses in particular on the use of legal discourse both by legal and non-legal experts. It may be mentioned that although some of the data is based on Italian cases, the process and procedures, and the trials themselves are conducted in international contexts, where participants come from different international backgrounds, and have the freedom to use any of the varieties of world Englishes. Most of these arbitration practitioners from Italy practice internationally and often participate in trials conducted in English.