Subcourt Proposal: English Language

#1

English Language

Parameters

Parent court: General.
Juror fee: 0.1 ETH.
Jurors for jump: 255.
Minimum Stake: 15 000 PNK.
Alpha: 32.5%.

Description

Court Purpose

In this subcourt, jurors will solve disputes involving quality of written content. This includes grammar and text logic.

Required Skills

This subcourt requires an advanced level of English. Jurors who are not native English speakers are advised to stake into this court only if they have C1+ level of English.
The following tests evaluates a C1 level: Cambridge Advanced (CAE), BEC Higher, BULATS score 75+, CLB/CELPIP 8+, CAEL 70+, IELTS level 7, TOEFL 110+, TOEIC score 880+.

Example

Contractor utilizes poor grammar in a sponsored article which doesn’t meet the standards as agreed in the contract.

Summary

Policies

  • If the disputed content is of significant size (> 10 000 words), parties in the dispute should point out to specific parts of the content which are being disputed. Otherwise, jurors should refuse to arbitrate.
  • All variations of English (UK, US, Australia, etc) are to accepted unless a target audience is specifically mentioned in the contract.

Rationale

This court will be used for English Writing and Article escrow contracts.
The policy prevents jurors from having to study considerable amount of text.

#2

English language is itself quite vast and flexible. Beyond the obvious differences in spelling between American and British English, there are
differences in vocabulary, idioms, grammar, phrasing and sentence structures that could be the subject matter of dispute.

These differences arise from differences in class, region, country, race, profession and many other identities.

Examples:

  1. “mutton” is used to refer to goat meat in the Indian subcontinent whereas everywhere else it refers to meat from older sheep.

  2. AAVE/Ebonics has grammatical differences from “white” English. Eg, “I seen” instead of “I saw” or “I’ve seen”

  3. There may be differences in the use of collective nouns. For instance, in American English you would say “the band is good” whereas in British English you would say “the band are good”

Source for number 3: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://learningenglish.voanews.com/amp/3063743.html&ved=2ahUKEwiqg7WrgJTiAhWDuo8KHfVMCeYQFjAEegQIDxAZ&usg=AOvVaw3b-cubvR5xGa7Q-NquuYsU&ampcf=1

And of course, certain terms that are acceptable in informal discourse may not be acceptable in formal discourse and vice-versa. You wouldn’t put slang words in a business letter. Certain groups of people may have a shared meaning of a word that isn’t used by people outside the group, etc

While it may seem innocuous, “correcting” someone’s English may have a wider socio-political context attached.

I would propose a policy that advises jurors to take in consideration the INTENDED AUDIENCE of the document under controversy and be mindful of all relevant sociological variables that may impact the flow and manner of communication between the source and the target of the communicated message.

#3

Excellent and well reasoned reply Abeer. It is certainly true, the English language is rife with nuances which will likely lead to confusion.

I think there is a generally held standard throughout the academic and ‘high’ level cryptosphere (Whitepapers, Tokenomics etc) which adheres to a specific style and quality which is content agnostic but ‘rule’ pure in terms of grammar and construction.

The English/ American differences are very common I agree. Better may be alluding to the academic / high journalism level and style of english writing which I’d imagine 99% of any escrow contracts in this court would be looking for.

Your proposed policy sounds good with the potential added caveat of stressing if disputes have regional differences in English / US grammar, they should be checked and highlighted as evidence according to the intended audience.

#4

Maybe we could state that all variations of English are to accepted unless a target audience is specifically mentioned in the contract.

#5

Thank you, Stuart. I agree with you that if the brunt of disputes arise out of academic and related writing styles, then the likelihood of being faced with questions about pidgin vocabulary or unconventional grammatical structures is dramatically reduced.

Although I would wager that even in that subset pertinent differences in grammar and vocabulary might persist between different disciplines, professions and countries/regions.

#6

In the absence of anything being mentioned regarding style or dialectrical variation in the contract I think the parties could produce evidence to prove what the intended audience and linguistic context of the disputed document is, too.

#7

Well that would mean that contractors would need to understand the implied audience without it being mentioned. I think in the case the audience is not specify, it’s better to consider the work correct.

#8

I updated the proposal accordingly.

#9

The proposal has been put to vote.

#10

The court has been created.