English for Legal Studies

Serie diretta da Laura Pinnavaia e Annalisa ZanolaLa serie accoglie opere scientifiche dedicate alla lingua inglese per scopi accademici e professionali che rivisitano i fondamenti scientifici dell’argomento trattato per fornirne informazioni aggiornate e innovative. Si rivolge a studenti, ricercatori, studiosi e professionisti interessati ad approfondire la conoscenza dell’inglese nei diversi settori consolidati della comunicazione. È pensata sia per l’insegnamento e l’apprendimento delle lingue sia per chi, operando in ambito universitario, istituzionale o aziendale, ha la necessità di fornire nozioni e competenze linguistiche e professionali specifiche. Legal English nowadays calls for different levels of specialized expertise within the academic and professional worlds. It must take into account the interaction between speakers, and especially native and non-native ones, but must also be grounded on a sound working knowledge of use within differing register(s) and context(s). This places considerable demands upon the teachers and curriculum designers responsible for teaching legal English to students at university level. They themselves may have trouble in understanding the cognitive complexity of legal documents, and the linguistic realization of that complexity. It is to such meanings that this book will draw attention. By giving prominence to its users and contexts/sub-genres in a new manner, the book explores legal language – English-speaking jurisdictions, classification of law, legal genres, legal text types – and the complex linguistic needs of law school and legal practice – vocabulary in contexts, grammar and basic sentence structure, textual constraints and conventions.