This volume provides new insights into the diverse and complex contexts of legal discourse and activity performed across a variety of socially and culturally informed digital media transformations. It addresses topical issues of legal discourse performed by Web-mediated technologies and (social) media usage in professional and institutional contexts of communication. Its analyses rely on specific perspectives, varied applications, and different methodological procedures, providing a multifaceted overview of ongoing research and knowledge in the field.

The primary goal of this book is to reach a better understanding of how the digital revolution has affected language and discourse practices in the field of law. It also explores the complex nature of the techniques and discursive strategies which emerge in the relationship between the different stakeholders (including non-experts) thanks to technological advances. By adopting a discourse analytical perspective which combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the book explores the hybridity of new genres and communicative processes. It provides an interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns, as well as any solutions already adopted in their professional areas. Their insights converge in a truly multidisciplinary effort to devise and build advanced networks of knowledge to facilitate the interpretation of data in the field of legal linguistics - with a specific focus on digitalisation processes which concern contemporary legal discourse. The book is meant for scholars interested in the evolution of the interconnection between language and law in digital environments. It also addresses law and linguistics students, ideally with some training in language analysis and particular interest in new media and genres. All necessary linguistic or legal technicalities are, however, approached while bearing in mind a wide range of potential backgrounds and levels of education.

Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution together with a sustained criticism of legal exegesis and `legalese' more generally. In the first part of the work the doctrinal history of the legal discipline and its concepts of language, text and sign are examined and assessed. In the second part the contemporary disciples of linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies are brought to bear upon the task of constructing a theory of legal discourse as a linguistics of legal power.

There are multiple aspects of electronically-mediated communication that influence and have strong implications for legal practice. This volume focuses on three major aspects of mediated communication through social media. Part I examines social media and the legal community. It explores how this has influenced professional legal discourse and practice, contributing to the popularity of internet-based legal research, counselling and assistance through online services offering explanations of law, preparing documents, providing evidence, and even encouraging electronically mediated alternative dispute resolution. Part II looks at the use of social media for client empowerment. It examines how it has taken legal practice from a formal and distinct business to one that is publicly informative and accessible. Part III discusses the way forward, exploring the opportunities and challenges. Based on cases from legal practice in diverse jurisdictions, the book highlights key issues as well as implications for legal practitioners on the one hand, and clients on the other. The book will be a valuable reference for international scholars in law and other socio-legal studies, discourse analysis, and practitioners in legal and alternative dispute resolution contexts.

What exactly is legal about legal language? What happens to legal language when it is used across linguistic, national, socio-political, cultural, and legal systems? In what way is generic integrity of legal documents maintained in multilingual and multicultural legal contexts? What happens when the same rule of law is applied across legal systems? By bringing together scholars and practitioners from more than ten countries, representing various jurisdictions, languages, and socio-political backgrounds, this book addresses these key issues arising from the differences in legal or sociocultural systems. The discussions are based not only on the analysis of the legal texts alone, but also on the factors shaping such constructions and interpretations. Given the increasing international need for accurate and authoritative translation and use of legal documents, this important volume has considerable contemporary relevance in a globalized economy. It will appeal to discourse analysts, commercial consultants, legal trainers, translators, and applied researchers in professional communication, especially in the field of legal writing and languages for specific purposes.

This volume provides descriptive and interpretive insights into the ‘living’ usage of language and other semiotic modes in building and performing the law across academic, professional and institutional contexts, where issues arise from the meaning and function of legal texts, discourse and genre in constituting and enabling conventions, albeit dynamically, and account for the socially and (inter)culturally influenced forms of discursive actions and practices. The twenty contributions included here weave significant contexts and situations for legal discourse and practice into a tight thread, and justify selected topic areas through a variety of approaches, frameworks, methodologies, and procedures. As such, this publication is multidimensional and multiperspectival in its design and implementation of key issues confronting discursive actions and practices of the law, and provides an invaluable resource for academics in a wider range of disciplines, including linguistics, applied linguistics and communication studies. It will also be of interest to students of interdisciplinary discourse analysis.

This book explores the ways language is used by the professional legal community for the communication of its main business - the negotiation of justice - in today’s globalized world. The volume addresses three main aspects of language use in the negotiation of justice. Beginning with the legal contexts of litigation, arbitration and mediation, the book moves on to discuss the main issues identified in those contexts and finally it explores the applications of legal linguistics. These three aspects are studied across the themes of analyses of legal discourse and genres, issues of power and ideology in the use of legal language, cross-cultural legal communication, questions of recontextualization, accessibility and plain language, law and disciplinary identity, and pedagogy of legal language. With chapters set across a variety of jurisdictions, the contributions offer analytical insights into the interface between law and language. The book is a valuable resource for those in the legal community wishing to increase their understanding of the use of language for the negotiation of justice.