All-inclusiveness in Legal Language. Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Specialized Discourse

Abstract

This book explores recent theoretical and practical changes in the investigation of language and context, with a particular attention to legal language as a highly specialized discourse. Given the huge variety of human experiences, any approach to language cannot be solely conducted at the level of grammatical rules and structures, but at the level of social contexts and contextual backgrounds as well. In fact, important form-function correlations are discovered when lexico-grammatical investigations are supported by sociocultural and psycho-cognitive enquires about the way in which textual artefacts (and, particularly, specialized texts) are conventionally and linguistically organized and interpreted. As the analysis developed into the field of EU contract law has demonstrated, the problem to understand the way in which meanings are dynamically produced, conveyed, and interpreted requires paying attention to the multilayered dimensions in which variable portions of communication are combined, negotiated, and finally changed. In fact, the semantic boundaries of community acquis lexemes are becoming more and more shifting because of the centrifugal pressures working at the level of EU institutions and compelling each state to accordingly adjust in terms of legislation and its technical language. In the end, discourse analysis has no choice but to become multidimensional and multiperspective in order to provide a detailed examination and thorough understanding of specialized/professional discourse.