Foundations in Language and Law [FLL] – serie

Hate speech has been extensively studied by disciplines such as social psychology, sociology, history, politics and law. Some significant areas of study have been the origins of hate speech in past and modern societies around the world; the way hate speech paves the way for harmful social movements; the socially destructive force of propaganda; and the legal responses to hate speech. On reviewing the literature, one major weakness stands out: hate speech, a crime perpetrated primarily by malicious and damaging language use, has no significant study in the field of linguistics. Historically, pragmatic theories have tended to address language as cooperative action, geared to reciprocally informative polite understanding. As a result of this idealized view of language, negative types of discourse such as harassment, defamation, hate speech, etc. have been neglected as objects of linguistic study. Since they go against social, moral and legal norms, many linguists have wrongly depicted those acts of wrong communication as unusual, anomalous or deviant when they are, in fact, usual and common in modern societies all over the world.The book analyses the challenges legal practitioners and linguists must meet when dealing with hate speech, especially with the advent of new technologies and social networks, and takes a linguistic perspective by targeting the knowledge the linguist can provide that makes harassment actionable.

This collection is about how law makes meaning and how meaning makes law. Through clear methodology and substantial findings, chapters expose the deficits of ‘literal’ meaning and the difficulties in 'ordinary' meaning, in international legal contexts and in more immediate social ones, as well as in courtrooms. Further, chapters in this volume see the challenges to national and international commitments to all speakers sharing a common meaning.

This volume provides new insights on lying and (intentionally) misleading in and out of the courtroom, a timely topic for scholarship and society. Not all deceptive statements are lies; not every lie under oath amounts to perjury—but what are the relevant criteria? Taxonomies of falsehood based on illocutionary force, utterance context and speakers’ intentions have been debated by linguists, moral philosophers, social psychologists and cognitive scientists. Legal scholars have examined the boundary between actual perjury and garden-variety lies. The fourteen previously unpublished essays in this book apply theoretical and empirical tools to delineate the landscape of falsehood, half-truth, perjury, and verbal manipulation, including puffery, bluffing, and bullshit. The papers in this collection address conceptual and ethical aspects of lying vs. misleading and the correlation of this opposition with the Gricean pragmatic distinction between what is said and what is implicated. The questions of truth and lies addressed in this volume have long engaged the attention of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, organizational research, and the law, and researchers from all these fields will find this book of interest.

This volume offers an in-depth analysis of the social phenomenon of migration from various legal-linguistic perspectives. Migration has become a global phenomenon and a burning issue provoking social conflict and political instability in modern societies all over the world. The question of dealing with migrants and asylum seekers has dominated political discourse. It has given rise to national and international legislation on emigration and immigration, some of them including discriminatory provisions, pressed laws against immigration (Acts of exclusion) and prompted anti-migration rhetoric and hate speech against migrants. Important efforts have been made in both common law and civil law jurisdictions to protect migrants' fundamental rights to dignity and equality.

This collection on legal interpretation in a broad sense presents state-of-the-art linguistic approaches that are applied for studying interpretation and meaning generation in various legal settings. It covers different aspects of the concepts like judicial dissent, court argumentation, investigating sociological meaning, or comparing legal meaning in comparative law. Scholars can turn to the volume for methods and findings to ground their own inquiries, and students will find guides to topics and methods in the field of law, meaning generation, and language.

This book analyzes the complex interplay between gesture, speech and other modal resources (e.g., gaze, facial expression, motion) during the presentation of evidence and interpretation of testimony in court. By analyzing recordings of a well-known rape trial, the authors reveal how multimodal oratory contributes to forensic linguistics and gesture studies, and how it helps understand recent policy recommendations for reforming the rape trial.

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.

This collection is about how law makes meaning and how meaning makes law. Through clear methodology and substantial findings, chapters expose the deficits of ‘literal’ meaning and the difficulties in 'ordinary' meaning, in international legal contexts and in more immediate social ones, as well as in courtrooms. Further, chapters in this volume see the challenges to national and international commitments to all speakers sharing a common meaning.

While maritime law and law of the sea are highly-researched domains of law, there are few studies about the language associated with these fields. In a global society that is increasingly impacted by environmental, health, social, humanitarian, and political crises that partly unfold on the sea, this volume unites legal scholars and linguists who work on the language of these fields. The book includes chapters that focus on macro levels of linguistic analyses (e.g., discourse and genre analysis) and micro levels (e.g., terminology) as well as translation. Several languages for maritime legal purposes are studied, including English, French, and Chinese.

Clarity of court proceedings is increasingly considered essential to both the efficiency and the quality of a modern judiciary. One particularly under-researched area is the language of pleadings, i.e., texts written by lawyers representing the parties in court. Building on the results of the AttiChiari project, the first part of the book contains chapters on recent legal reforms and the language of Italian lawyers, while the second part includes chapters on the language of lawyers in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Romania and the United Kingdom. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the volume combines legal and linguistic expertise in equal measure, as well as a substantial body of practical reflections by civil and criminal lawyers. Having clarity of court proceedings as a unifying thread, the volume focuses on access to justice as a prerequisite for democracy and for a truly inclusive society.

This volume provides new insights on lying and (intentionally) misleading in and out of the courtroom, a timely topic for scholarship and society. Not all deceptive statements are lies; not every lie under oath amounts to perjury—but what are the relevant criteria? Taxonomies of falsehood based on illocutionary force, utterance context and speakers’ intentions have been debated by linguists, moral philosophers, social psychologists and cognitive scientists. Legal scholars have examined the boundary between actual perjury and garden-variety lies. The fourteen previously unpublished essays in this book apply theoretical and empirical tools to delineate the landscape of falsehood, half-truth, perjury, and verbal manipulation, including puffery, bluffing, and bullshit. The papers in this collection address conceptual and ethical aspects of lying vs. misleading and the correlation of this opposition with the Gricean pragmatic distinction between what is said and what is implicated. The questions of truth and lies addressed in this volume have long engaged the attention of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, organizational research, and the law, and researchers from all these fields will find this book of interest.

This edited collection illuminates the mechanisms involved in courtroom reality construction and the ways in which trial narratives are created and legal facts established. It covers a wide range of jurisdictions and legal procedures spanning five continents. In addition to explaining how courtroom actors utilise words to craft their narratives within institutional constraints, it draws attention to the effect the gestural, visual and material resources have on the discursive shaping of the judicial process. The book highlights the intersection of legal and non-legal perspectives in judicial and related settings: those of judges, prosecutors, attorneys, complainants, lay witnesses, forensic experts, witness intermediaries and jurors. Going beyond (just) words, the volume elucidates the processes of meaning-making and the discourse practices which underlie asymmetrical interaction in judicial settings. Informed by diverse theoretical frameworks, the book will appeal to legal linguists and discourse analysts studying institutional communication, as well as legal practitioners engaged in trial practice.

This book explores the language used in legal arguments. It moves beyond traditional argumentation studies, using corpus linguistics and computational tools combined with a deep understanding of the institutional environment in which legal argumentation takes place. The studies presented in this volume unveil judges’ argumentative discourse and legal interpretation strategies, providing a toolkit for scholars and practitioners alike.

Hate speech has been extensively studied by disciplines such as social psychology, sociology, history, politics and law. Some significant areas of study have been the origins of hate speech in past and modern societies around the world; the way hate speech paves the way for harmful social movements; the socially destructive force of propaganda; and the legal responses to hate speech. On reviewing the literature, one major weakness stands out: hate speech, a crime perpetrated primarily by malicious and damaging language use, has no significant study in the field of linguistics. Historically, pragmatic theories have tended to address language as cooperative action, geared to reciprocally informative polite understanding. As a result of this idealized view of language, negative types of discourse such as harassment, defamation, hate speech, etc. have been neglected as objects of linguistic study. Since they go against social, moral and legal norms, many linguists have wrongly depicted those acts of wrong communication as unusual, anomalous or deviant when they are, in fact, usual and common in modern societies all over the world.The book analyses the challenges legal practitioners and linguists must meet when dealing with hate speech, especially with the advent of new technologies and social networks, and takes a linguistic perspective by targeting the knowledge the linguist can provide that makes harassment actionable.

This book analyzes the complex interplay between gesture, speech and other modal resources (e.g., gaze, facial expression, motion) during the presentation of evidence and interpretation of testimony in court. By analyzing recordings of a well-known rape trial, the authors reveal how multimodal oratory contributes to forensic linguistics and gesture studies, and how it helps understand recent policy recommendations for reforming the rape trial.

This volume offers an in-depth analysis of the social phenomenon of migration from various legal-linguistic perspectives. Migration has become a global phenomenon and a burning issue provoking social conflict and political instability in modern societies all over the world. The question of dealing with migrants and asylum seekers has dominated political discourse. It has given rise to national and international legislation on emigration and immigration, some of them including discriminatory provisions, pressed laws against immigration (Acts of exclusion) and prompted anti-migration rhetoric and hate speech against migrants. Important efforts have been made in both common law and civil law jurisdictions to protect migrants' fundamental rights to dignity and equality.

This collection on legal interpretation in a broad sense presents state-of-the-art linguistic approaches that are applied for studying interpretation and meaning generation in various legal settings. It covers different aspects of the concepts like judicial dissent, court argumentation, investigating sociological meaning, or comparing legal meaning in comparative law. Scholars can turn to the volume for methods and findings to ground their own inquiries, and students will find guides to topics and methods in the field of law, meaning generation, and language.