Böcker i Oxford Studies in Language and Law-serien

Ambiguity is commonly considered unintentional while deception is considered intentional. Here, Roger W. Shuy describes fifteen criminal cases in which police, prosecutors, and undercover agents used deceptive ambiguity with criminal suspects and defendants, many times giving evidence of being intentionally constructed through the manipulation of the speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, strategies, lexicon, and grammar. Although certain types of intentionaldeceptive ambiguity are central for successful undercover operations, the case examples in this book demonstrate how various types of deceptive ambiguity are common not only in undercover operations but also in police interviews and courtroom examinations conducted by prosecutors.

The Roman Catholic Church has been criticized for many reasons, including its legalism. The growing aversion of church members to the law and the church hierarchy''s juridified interpretation of Christianity is fueled by the language of ecclesiastical law (medieval legal Latin), which excludes most of the faithful from understanding and participating in debates on reforming the church''s legal structure.In The Language of Canon Law, Judith Hahn explores the legal order of the Roman Catholic Church to better understand how the Roman Catholic Church communicates as a legal institution. She argues that the language of canon law reveals the political ideology of the church hierarchy, and she takes up the tools of language and law scholarship to examine and challenge that language. Examining the function of canon law language in ecclesiastical communications, she studies the character ofcanonical language, the grammar and terminology of canon law, and how canon law language makes use of linguistic tricks and techniques to create its typical sound. Further, Hahn discusses the comprehension difficulties that arise out of ambiguities in the law, out of transfer problems between legal and commonlanguage, and out of canon law''s confusing mix of legal, doctrinal, and moral norms. An important contribution to law, language, theology, and sociology alike, this book proposes a rethinking of whether Latin is the appropriate language of a global and cross-cultural legal order like canon law, suggesting that the global church instead seek to develop a multi-language practice.

Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law sheds light on the complicated process of language interpretation that adjudicators (judges and arbitrators) and legal practitioners adopt when they act within international legal systems. The book also analyzes the role that language and the diversity of languages and national legal cultures plays in different international legal systems.

Dueling Discourses offers qualitative and quantitative analyses of the linguistic and discursive forms utilized by opposing lawyers in their closing arguments during criminal trials.

Confronting the Death Penalty probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative linguistic methods, the book explores how language, including written laws and trial talk, affects jurors' death penalty decisions. By focusing on how language can both facilitate and stymie empathic encounters, Conley investigates the interface between experiential and linguistic aspects oflegal-decision making to address the moral conflict faced by jurors that is inherent to death penalty trials.

This book offers a selection of twelve of Peter Tiersma's most influential publications, divided into five thematic areas that are critical to both law and linguistics.

Indeterminacy in the law is pervasive. Many claim that it facilitates flexibility and can be strategically deployed. But what are the sources of indeterminacy, what effects do its different forms have, and how should it be used? This book provides a needed, comprehensive account of strategic indeterminacy in the law.

This book offers a comprehensive account of official multilingualism and its legal ramifications. Janny H.C. Leung shows that while offering official status to multiple languages has become normalized, actual implementation and success vary. Despite often elaborate institutional adaptations, changes hardly ever challenge the status quo enjoyed by a dominant linguistic group. Leung argues that both

Outsourcing legal translation gives rise to dangers of information asymmetry, goal divergence, and significant risk. This work reports on market behavior across 6 continents and 41 countries to underscore areas for improving cross-border legal translation. It contains original theoretical models aimed both at training legal translators and informing all stakeholders.

The European pursuit for legal integration and language diversity poses a puzzling question: how can the EU create uniform laws in 24 official languages successfully? This book argues that the answer lies in elevating the English language version, and seeking literalism over fluency in allying the other language versions.

This collection of empirical studies addresses many questions about the conduct of law in practice by treating law as a relationship between legal institutions and an external society.

Through an analysis of copyright in a digital context, Stefan Larssons Conceptions in the Code explains the role that metaphor plays in the law's handling of technological change. It makes a significant contribution to sociolegal analysis as well as conceptual metaphor theory.

Experts in linguistics and law use diverse theoretical and analytical approaches to demonstrate the complex ways in which language is used to seek, steer, give, or withhold consent in a range of legal contexts. The book illuminates problematic issues in legal practices and procedures that may otherwise be uncritically accepted.

In this first ever discourse analysis of advocacy advice texts-manuals, handbooks, and other how-to guides written by lawyers for lawyers.

Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative linguistic methods, the book explores how language, including written laws and trial talk, affects jurors' death penalty decisions. By focusing on how language can both facilitate and stymie empathic encounters, Conley investigates theinterface between experiential and linguistic aspects of legal-decision making to address the moral conflict faced by jurors that is inherent to death penalty trials.

This book explores how language ideologies circulated in the hearsay rule of the Anglo-American law of evidence create the potential to speak for and/or ignore the speech of victims of domestic violence, using discourse analysis to identify the particular mechanisms in case law and statute that do this work.

The first monograph to examine textual standardization patterns in legal and administrative texts on the basis of lexical bundles, drawing from a comprehensive corpus of medieval and early modern legal texts

This book presents a study of interpreter-mediated interaction in New York City small claims courts, drawing on audio-recorded arbitration hearings and ethnographic fieldwork.

In coordinated papers that are grounded in empirical research, the volume contributors use careful linguistic analysis to understand how attempts to translate between different disciplines can misfire in systematic ways.

In coordinated papers that are grounded in empirical research, the volume contributors use careful linguistic analysis to understand how attempts to translate between different disciplines can misfire in systematic ways. This problem takes on real-life significance when one of the fields is law, where how knowledge is conveyed can affect how justice is meted out.