The purpose of this essay is to advocate for including jurilinguistics in legal education. It presents jurilinguistics as a tool for understanding law and therefore supports continuing efforts to teach it. Knowing it is not unique, this essay proposes a jurilinguistic approach that focuses on the in-between of legal translation and comparative law. The proposal outlines the importance of educating in the capabilities of teaching a particular subject in a language other than their official one. The idea is to (...) let the Other help to understand the Self. Particularly pertinent in transnational law programs, it is a multicultural approach that not only recognizes the other, but also embraces it. (shrink)

This is the guest editors’ introductory paper to the special issue “Situating jurilinguistics across cultures using translation and discourse approaches.” The introduction showcases the interdisciplinary vocation of jurilinguistics from its conception almost forty years ago. It is argued that jurilinguistics has achieved its current maturity by diversifying the disciplinary lenses of the originally contributing disciplines of legal translation and legal studies while keeping faithful to its original principles—facing practical problems with a rigorous outlook, venturing into any new domains that may (...) prove enlightening, and combining professional and academic perspectives. The authors highlight how the series of conferences “Jurilinguistics: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Language and Law” have been instrumental in enhancing the scope of jurilinguistics. Finally, the articles gathered in this special issue are presented and their contributions in advancing the knowledge available for practitioners and scholars meeting at the interface between law and language are underscored. (shrink)

Inside the interdisciplinary field of Jurilinguistics, the main research has been carried out on state languages like English, French, German or Spanish. However, there is a new reality in today´s world, namely the existence of minority languages that have arisen to an official status as sub-state languages for the law and a limited range of branches of the law to be the own way to express themselves. The jurilinguistical point of view of this new reality requires a new approach to (...) it, mainly focused on both a general framework and the situation of each language. This is the reason for a first attempt to formulate a jurilinguistical general framework and a methodological approach to this new field in combination with the study of a particular case language, the Basque language, in order to describe its characters as a sub-state tool for expressing the Basque law and bijuralism, in accordance with its status as an official language in the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarrese Community, both in the Kingdom of Spain. (shrink)

Context is a notion that is commonly invoked in many linguistic studies, either with very general reference or, more specifically, in the light of one of a number of research approaches which assign distinct definitions to context, ranging from factors that can be recovered from a text, through social parameters serving as an index for the appropriation of discursive performance, to factors that bring texts into being and give them meaning. This exploratory and descriptive research problematises the notion of context (...) specifically on the grounds of English/Polish translation of corporate documentation processed in company registration proceedings, touching upon factors that are presumed to be discursively relevant in this communicative situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of the sociocultural approach and it adopts the parallel corpus methodology. The author discusses the concept of context on the ground of legal communication and secondarily presents a corpus-based description of the context categories that are idiosyncratic and potentially discursively relevant for the said communicative situation in the cross-linguistic perspective. The contextual variation is tested for its capacity to affect translation performance. The results reveal specific tendencies as regards the distribution patterns in the values corresponding to the investigated context categories. They point to some divergencies in translation output caused by the source text variantivity and they pave the way and directions for further research. Already at this stage the findings may have significant pedagogical value and they constitute a solid starting point for sociolinguistic research on discourse variantivity. (shrink)

In this article I briefly describe the structure and content of the _Research Handbook in Jurilinguistics_ (Wagner and Matulewska, eds., Edward Elgar _Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics_, 2023). I discuss two main aspects which, to my view, make it a unique work: first, the focus on issues of vagueness and on some pratical aspects of legal interpretation/translation; second, the timeliness of work in law and language both with practical and theoretical takes on the phenomenology of legislation and legal decision-making.

The advent and expanding role of jurilinguistics as part of the federal legislative process are closely associated with the gradual recognition of the equal authority of the two linguistic versions of federal legislation, as well as the implementation of co-drafting as the most effective method of taking into account the equal authority of the two official languages of the country. Jurilinguistics gradually made its way into the federal legislative process starting in the mid 70s and quickly resulted in the establishment (...) of a formal group dealing with French jurilinguistics, comprised of Francophone drafters and jurilinguists. Jurilinguists played a key role in the development of drafting standards for the drafting of a truly authentic French version of federal legislation. In the late 90s, Anglophone jurilinguists were also hired to ensure the highest quality possible for the English version of the federal laws and, along with their Francophone counterparts, to ensure the functional equivalence of the two language versions. The implementation of the departmental policy on legislative bijuralism constituted an additional challenge for the drafter who, fortunately, can rely on comparative law experts, as well as the sound advice of the jurilinguists, to produce legislative texts that are consistent with the principles of clarity in drafting legal documents. (shrink)

The Law of the European Union is multilingual and multijural. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the problems related to the use of several languages in the writing of European legal texts and to compare the interactions between law and language in the decision-making process at the executive and judicial levels. Finally, the study will focus on the contributions of translation as a linguistic mediation in the communication of the European message on the continent.

Ah, emojis ☺. Some enthusiastically speak of them as a new universal language. In 2015, the Oxford English dictionary crowned one of them as its word of the year. Sixty million are exchanged daily on Facebook. Along with emoticons and various other smileys, emojis are now part of daily communications. Visual add-ons or superscript, they are meant to indicate intent or add emotions to written messages, which do not benefit from the tone or body language of the interlocutor. As such, (...) they present themselves as tools for clarification, but one can wonder if they do not, too, introduce uncertainty in language. Aimed at barristers as well as jurilinguists, this paper seeks to underline some design and perception biases that can hinder communication, with a focus on rules of evidence and legal methodology. Empirically rooted in Canadian case law, the findings resonate in other jurisdictions, as emojis, indeed, are a global phenomenon. (shrink)

Translated texts sometimes reflect the writing tradition of the targeted law, but the equivalence of the source legal message, however, must be delivered in the target text. Translating law into a different legal culture cannot be accomplished without comparing laws, whose knowledge is essential to achieving legal equivalence. The way the target text is written should match its culture. Translating law is the moment when languages, cultures and laws meet. To materialize, this encounter has to be based on an ad (...) hoc knowledge of the laws at stake. Then comparative law, translators’ “fellow traveler”, comes into play, preparing them for the exchange. To achieve this, “one only needs two receptions which intersect”. This move is successful when concepts and notions overlap and the letter of law and its wording merge, revealing “the spirit of the laws”. Comparative analysis is the way to achieve this result. It is conducted here under the light of jurilinguistics with an analysis of terms and concepts presenting various translation difficulties, demonstrating the necessity of comparative law. The lessons to be learned are aimed at all language professionals wishing to draw inspiration from the jurilinguists’comparative analysis approach to their work. (shrink)

En latence dans le texte, le sens attend d’être révélé par l’interprétation. Lorsqu’il s’agit de traduire, la difficulté que présente la traduction de certains textes juridiques tient en bonne part, outre au caractère normatif de ce type de texte, à la charge notionnelle dont il est porteur. Plus la société qui l’a produit est ancienne et développée, plus ses institutions et son langage seront complexes. Chaque terme cèle un univers reflétant la profondeur des fondations de l’édifice juridique, l’originalité et le (...) dynamisme de la culture qui l’a façonné. Le message que véhicule un texte prime dans l’interprétation qui en sera faite. Son mode d’expression—son style—n’est pas pour autant quantité négligeable. La manière de dire est porteuse de x significations possibles. Elle influe sur le sens et sa perception, en modifie parfois le cours et l’interprétation que peut en faire le traducteur ou le jurilinguiste—voire le juriste. En sursis jusqu’à son interprétation finale par les tribunaux, le sens du texte est alors fixé. Dans cette perspective, à en croire Gadamer, le traducteur est bien placé pour en distinguer les formes lorsqu’il interprètera le message du texte de départ en vue de le traduire. (shrink)

The study is aimed to test the governing-law anchor in the comparative analysis of legal terminology to harmonize the clash of legal cultures in legal translation. It is considered as an adjustment to a juritraductological approach to legal translation which invites legal translators to merge the tools of jurilinguistics, comparative law and traductology in the comparative analysis of legal concepts before selecting a suitable translation solution (Monjean-Decaudin, in: Research methods in legal translation and interpreting, Routledge, 2019). Rather than transposing a (...) text from a source law system to a target law system, legal translators are believed to operate in the bi-semiotic environment of two legal cultures as navigators of their recipients toward understanding the legal concepts under the governing law of the document. To this end a comparative conceptual analysis, that correlates with the parametrization method (Matulewska in Stud Logic Gramm Rhetor 45:161–174, 2016), should be anchored in the analysis of the source law concepts (Šarčević in New Approach to Legal Translation, Kluwer Law International, The Hague, 2000). First, the componential and taxonomic analyses were used to identify conceptual markers/parameters of source concepts to serve as tertia comparationis for the subsequent search of their functional equivalents in the target legal culture. Source concepts and their functional equivalents were subsequently subject to a comparative componential analysis aimed to reveal a degree of their match based on which coinage operations were activated in selecting suitable translation strategies. We hypothesized that the change in the governing-law perspective would trigger changes in translation solutions. The governing-law-anchored process of comparative analysis was detailed and exemplified by the analysis of the conceptual field of Homicide in the Slovak law, English law, and the US Model Penal Code. (shrink)

Florian Heindler, Associate Professor at Sigmund Freud Private University, has published the third edition of his textbook on Property Law. This review finds that the work provides an accessible introduction to Austrian property law which excels in clarity, systematics, conciseness, and practicality. It allows beginners to appreciate the aesthetics of the study of property law without becoming overwhelmed with the increasing complexity of interrelated concepts and processes (see also [ 9 ]). Heindler’s work is also of great significance as it (...) bridges the domains of legal knowledge and linguistic understanding (see [ 2 ]). It clearly has the potential to inspire students by presenting property law as an engaging and fascinating field of study. The work also appears highly relevant to legal linguists and jurilinguists due to the critical role property plays in legal discourse and the methodological need for legal linguists, forensic linguists and jurilinguists to engage with legal textbooks in order to fully understand the legal system in which they operate. Future research into the discourse(s) of _ownership_ and _possession_ should overcome academic tribalism in both linguistics and legal studies, and foster targed-oriented interdisciplinary collaboration. Heindler's work could serve as a valuable conceptual basis for indepth research in legal linguistics, jurilinguistics, and forensic linguistics. Further research at the intersection of language and law on the existence, arrangement, and enforcement of property rights and their associated implications for social (in)equality could be oriented toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (shrink)

The Court of Justice of the European Union and the way in which it works can be seen as a microcosm of how a multilingual, multicultural supranationalisation process and legal order can be constructed—the Court is a microcosm of the EU as a whole and in particular of EU law. The multilingual jurisprudence produced by the CJEU is necessarily shaped by the dynamics within that institution and by the ‘cultural compromises’ at play in the production process. The resultant texts, which (...) make up that jurisprudence, are hybrid in nature and inherently approximate. On the one hand, that approximation can lead to discrepancies between language versions of the Court’s case law and thus jeopardise the uniform application of EU law. On the other hand, that approximation and hybridity define EU law as a distinct, supranational legal order. This paper analyses the operation of the CJEU and considers whether a linguistic cultural compromise exists within that institution which exercises a formative influence on the character of its ‘output’—i.e. its jurisprudence—and what that may mean for our understanding of the development of EU law. (shrink)

At a time when cooperation between Europe and the Arab World is getting more and more concrete, this article highlights the reciprocal influences between languages and legal culture both North and South of the Mediterranean for the redaction of a common discourse. Europe conceives and produces numerous pieces of legislation that have a significant impact on both Maghreb and Mashriq. It is thus necessary to look back at a few seminal studies on European legal discourse to focus on the various (...) types of corpus used, as well as how they are perceived abroad. This state of play underlines the linguistic and cultural interactions that will be faced by language studies in Europe in the fields of terminology, semantics and pragmatics. (shrink)