Legal-Lay Communication Textual Travels in the Law

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Synopsis

This volume responds to a growing interest in the language of legal settings by situating the study of language and law within contemporary theoretical debates in discourse studies, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics. The chapters in the collection explore many of the common occasions when those acting on behalf of the legal system, such as the police, lawyers and judges, interact with those coming into contact with the legal system, such as suspects and witnesses. However the chapters do this work through the conceptual lens of 'textual travel', or the way that texts move across space and time and are transformed along the way. Collectively, notions of textual travel shed new light on the ways in which texts can influence, and are influenced by, social and legal life.

With contributions from leading experts in language and law, Legal-Lay Communication explores such 'textual travel' themes as the mediating role of technologies in the investigatory stages of the legal process, the centrality of intertextuality in the legal construction of cases in court, the transformative effects of recontextualization in processes of judicial decision-making, and the way that processes of textual travel disturb the apparent permanence of legal categorization. The book challenges both the notion of legal text as a static repository of meaning and the very idea of legal-lay or lay-legal communication.

Book details

Series:
Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics
Author:
Chris Heffer, Frances Rock, John Conley
ISBN:
9780199359202
Related ISBNs:
9780199746842, 9780199746835
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Pages:
349
Reading age:
Not specified
Includes images:
No
Date of addition:
2022-10-09
Usage restrictions:
Copyright
Copyright date:
2013
Copyright by:
N/A 
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Categories:
Language Arts, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Nonfiction