Legal Discourses

Galdia, Marcus

doi:10.3726/978-3-653-04812-4

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Systematic legal-linguistic studies of the exercise of power in law with the help of language may be based upon the concept of power worked out by Michel Foucault (cf. Galdia 2014).…”

Section: Legal Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

Galdia

2021

Comparative Legilinguistics

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This essay is a survey of methods applied and topics scrutinized in legal-linguistic studies. It starts with the elucidation of the epistemic interest that led to the emergence and to the subsequent expansion of the mainstream legal-linguistic knowledge that we dispose of today. Thus, the essay focuses upon the development of problem awareness in the emerging legal-linguistic studies as well as upon the results of research that might be perceived as the state of the art in the mainstream legal linguistics. Meanwhile, some methodologically innovative tilts and twists that enrich and inspire contemporary legal linguistics are considered as well. Essentially, this essay traces the conceptual landscape in which the paradigms of legal-linguistic studies came about. This conceptual landscape extends from the research into the isolated words of law and the style used by jurists to the scrutiny of legal texts and legal discourses in all their socio-linguistic complexity. Within this broad frame of reference, many achievements in legal-linguistic studies are mentioned in order to sketch the consequences of processes in which legal-linguistic paradigms take shape. The author concludes upon a vision of legal linguistics called pragmatic legal linguistics as the newest stage in the intellectual enterprise that aims to pierce the language of the law and by so doing to understand law better.

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“…Systematic legal-linguistic studies of the exercise of power in law with the help of language may be based upon the concept of power worked out by Michel Foucault (cf. Galdia 2014).…”

Section: Legal Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

Galdia

2021

Comparative Legilinguistics

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“…This makes legal understanding complex. ‘(L)aw is complex, not only linguistically, [but] because it is a social discursive practice that is rooted in the deep structure of society’ (Galdia, 2014, p. 246). Law does not just have to be understood; it also has to have an effect.…”

Section: The Limits Of Plain Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their relationship is unique. They are not the same; moreover, plain law and plain language do not necessarily go together (Galdia, 2014, p. 245). ‘Plain legal’ is a controlled (nearly artificial) language and, the plainer it is, the further away it moves from the ‘ordinary’.…”

Section: Understanding Comprehensibility In Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

The limits of plain legal language: understanding the comprehensible style in law

Ződi

2019

International Journal of Law in Context

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The comprehensible style of legal texts seems to be a predominantly linguistic problem. This is how the plain-legal-language movements present it. But, while plain-language statutes have been on the agenda for decades in every civilised country, laws still become more and more complicated. The paper attempts to explain this controversy. First, it argues that comprehensibility has more aspects beyond the linguistic or stylistic one. Sometimes it is the linguistically simplest texts that raise the most serious comprehensibility problems. The paper refers to two pieces of corpus linguistic research that provide evidence that vocabulary and grammar in themselves do not explain the incomprehensibility of the legal texts. Second, for a more subtle handling of the comprehensibility problem, the paper offers a framework of three typical pragmatic situations – the processual, the problem-solving and the compliance settings – where comprehensibility problems arise in different ways. The conclusion of the paper is that, contrary to the usual explanation that the main reason for incomprehensibility is that, in law, clarity and accuracy can be only employed at each other's expense, it is rather the systemic and interpretive character of law and the growing importance of technical rules that hinder the understanding of legal texts.

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“…Suffice it to say that in recent years a few volumes on the complicated relations between law, language and context were published (e.g. Capone and Poggi, 2016; Galdia, 2014; Giltrow and Stein, 2017). The book under review is yet another valuable contribution to this realm of study, both in terms of expanding theoretical backgrounds and drawing practical implications of analyses.…”

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confidence: 99%

Book review: Dennis Kurzon and Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (eds), Legal Pragmatics

Dubrovskaya

2019

Discourse Studies

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Legal Discourses

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

The limits of plain legal language: understanding the comprehensible style in law

Book review: Dennis Kurzon and Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (eds), Legal Pragmatics

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