Arbitration v. Litigation: Critical Genre Analysis of Interdiscursive Colonization

International commercial arbitration is regarded as an economical and effective alternative to litigation for settling commercial disputes. However, over the years, arbitration is being increasingly ‘colonized’ by litigation practices, threatening, not only the integrity of arbitration practice as ‘alternative to litigation’, but also the very spirit of arbitration as a non-legal practice, which offers a unique opportunity for a critical genre analytical investigation of interdiscursive tensions across arbitration-litigation practices. By drawing on discourse data (narrative, documentary and interactional), this paper will focus on some of the important issues involved in this study of professional practice and discuss implications for the future of this institution as alternatives to litigation in international commercial contexts.