Legal discourse has been disparaged for at least a thousand years, but we live with it now, more so than in the past, entangled as it is in many of our daily activities. Every time we sign a charge slip, register for classes, engage in a rental agreement, file a health insurance claim, or marry and divorce, we enter the world of legal discourse. The casual reading of legal documents, say, the rules of state residency, does not exempt us from those rules. This course will be a close look at legal language and discourse in a variety of settings. We’ll address some of the theoretical issues—a set of readings from Foucault, including Discipline and Punish and Society Must Be Defended and then turn to analysis of various documents. We’ll look at contracts, confessions, trial transcripts, family law pleadings, ICE (formerly INS) forms, appellate decisions, warning labels, literature that engages legal issues, legislative language and film about legal contexts. We will also take a brief look at language and linguistics in forensic contexts and language policy. Every two weeks or so, we will examine some particular type of document using legal discourse as practice for the final seminar paper.

Texts:
Tiersma, Peter. Legal Language
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish
Selections from Society Must Be Defended (in readings packet)
Cotterill, Janet. Language in the Legal Process
Solan, Larry and Peter Tiersma. Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice\
Shuy, Roger. Selections from Fighting over Words: Language and Civil Law Cases (in readings
packet)
Crane, Gregg. Selections from Race, Citizenship and Law in American Literature
(in readings packet)
Spolsky, Bernard. Selections from Language Policy (in readings packet)
Readings packet

Texts: