ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how binomials and multinomials structure our social experience and crystallize a specific world view through their use and reproduction in legal documents. Through the study of these types of phrasemes in the International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR), this contribution explores what divisions are operated by the international community to organize our shared social experience. The study builds on Sinclair's stress on the relation between meaning and choice, his focus on the mutual influence of form and meaning, and the distinction between phrasemes' phraseological and terminological tendencies. By scrutinizing how fixed the divisions by which the international community organizes the world behave, the chapter explores whether the prevailing social divisions crystalized in binomials and multinomials are dichotomous by studying whether references to underprivileged groups have been lexicalized and are together understood as the specific set of humans which requires protection or whether these groups are considered individually in discourse.
