C. Heffer, F. Rock and J. Conley (eds): Legal-Lay Communication: Textual Travels in the Law.

Extract

In this volume, the editors have brought together a collection of studies examining various contexts of legal-lay communication, using the metaphor of ‘textual travel’ as the focal point for analysis. The individual contributors demonstrate the range of perspectives that a focus on legal-lay/lay-legal communication can take, exploring both oral and written discourse across diverse contexts. Likewise, analysis in individual chapters draws on a number of methodological approaches, from corpus to conversation analysis.

In their introduction, the editors begin by explaining the choice of ‘textual travel’ as the overarching metaphor for the volume, using it as a way to link various interrelated concepts from the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, and sociology. Of these, Bauman and Briggs’ (1990) notions of entextualization, decontextualization, and recontextualization and Blommaert’s (2005) reentextualization and text trajectories reappear the most frequently throughout the rest of the volume. The editors also address the ‘legal-lay’ distinction, considering how it may be understood as two categories of participant, a form of institutional interaction, or two ends of a spectrum of cognitive or discursive styles. They further problematize each of these possible understandings, considering cases that do not fit neatly within these boundaries. The chapters that follow vary in their emphasis on the legal or lay perspective.