Legal Discourse across Languages and Cultures

This series promotes specialist language studies, both in the fields of linguistic theory and applied linguistics, by publishing volumes that focus on specific aspects of language use and provide valuable insights into language and communication research. A cross-disciplinary approach is favoured and most European languages are accepted.

The chapters constituting this volume focus on legal language seen from cross-cultural perspectives, a topic which brings together two areas of research that have burgeoned in recent years, i.e. legal linguistics and intercultural studies, reflecting the rapidly changing, multifaceted world in which legal institutions and cultural/national identities interact. Within the broad thematic leitmotif of this volume, it has been possible to identify two major strands: legal discourse across languages on the one hand, and legal discourse across cultures on the other. Of course, labels of this kind are adopted partly as a matter of convenience, and it could be argued that any paper dealing with legal discourse across languages inevitably has to do with legal discourse across cultures. But a closer inspection of the papers comprising each of these two strands reveals that there is a coherent logic behind the choice of labels. All seven chapters in the first section are concerned with legal topics where more than one language is at stake, whereas all seven chapters in the second section are concerned with legal topics where cultural differences are brought to the fore.

Autorentext

The Editors: Maurizio Gotti is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Research Centre on Specialized Languages (CERLIS) at the University of Bergamo. His main research areas are the features and origins of specialized discourse. He is a member of the Editorial Board of national and international journals, and edits the Linguistic Insights series for Peter Lang.
Christopher Williams is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Language Centre at the University of Foggia. His main research areas are tense, aspect and modality in contemporary English and legal linguistics. He is co-editor of the journal ESP Across Cultures.

Zusammenfassung
"The editors are to be congratulated on having produced a stimulating collection of readings, with a rich assortment of topical issues concerning legal discourse in different linguistic contexts and cultural settings. [...] The volume as a whole provides valuable insights into the complex interaction of language, law and culture, at the national, international and global level." (Risto Hiltunen, The European English Messenger)

Inhalt
Contents: Maurizio Gotti/Christopher Williams: Introduction Susan arevi: Creating a Pan-European Legal Language Colin Robertson: Legal-linguistic Revision of EU Legislative Texts Martina Baji: Challenges of Translating EU Terminology Jan Roald/Sunniva Whittaker: Verbalization in French and Norwegian Legislative Texts: A Contrastive Case Study Lelija Soanac: Linguistic Transference in Croatian Law Articles Silvia Cacchiani/Chiara Preite: Law Dictionaries across Languages: Different Structures, Different Relations between Communities of Practice? Snjeana Husinec: The Use of Comparative Legal Analysis in Teaching the Language of the Law Janet Ainsworth: Linguistic Ideology in the Workplace: the Legal Treatment in American Courts of Employers' 'English-only' Policies William Bromwich: Discourse Practices and Divergences in Legal Cultures in Employment Tribunals Giorgia Riboni: Constructing the Terrorist in the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and the European Court of Human Rights Davide Mazzi: The Centrality of Counterfactual Conditionals in House of Lords and US Supreme Court Judgments Ignacio Vázquez Orta: A Genre-based View of Judgments of Appellate Courts in the Common Law System: Intersubjective Positioning, Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity in the Reasoning of Judges Thomas Christiansen: The Concepts of Property and of Land Rights in the Legal Discourse of Australia Relating to Indigenous Groups Ismael Arinas Pellón: How Does a Patent Move? Genre Analysis Has Something to Say about It.