Transforming Legal Communication
Cognitive and Multimodal Approaches
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 9. September 2026
Book
Hardback
314 pages
978-1-041-14440-3 (ISBN)
Description
This book examines creative new ways in which legal and administrative information are communicated to diverse audiences. Using a range of theoretical frameworks, it explores these transformations within broader societal issues such as legal activism, access to justice, and citizen participation.
Increasingly, there has been widespread recognition that non-specialists need to be able to understand legal information. Although plain language campaigns have made considerable progress in ensuring that legal texts are now less dense and more readable, such measures are often shown to be insufficient. For this reason, many institutions such as parliaments and courts have made considerable efforts to present this information in more attractive digital formats, and to disseminate the core messages via other media including video and virtual reality. In addition to addressing the social and political trends underlying these changes, the volume provides evidence of various cognitive and multimodal strategies used in different languages and cultures, investigating discourse practices in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.
The collection will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and professionals working in the areas of law, public administration, communication, and applied linguistics.
Increasingly, there has been widespread recognition that non-specialists need to be able to understand legal information. Although plain language campaigns have made considerable progress in ensuring that legal texts are now less dense and more readable, such measures are often shown to be insufficient. For this reason, many institutions such as parliaments and courts have made considerable efforts to present this information in more attractive digital formats, and to disseminate the core messages via other media including video and virtual reality. In addition to addressing the social and political trends underlying these changes, the volume provides evidence of various cognitive and multimodal strategies used in different languages and cultures, investigating discourse practices in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.
The collection will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and professionals working in the areas of law, public administration, communication, and applied linguistics.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic and Postgraduate
Illustrations
19 s/w Tabellen, 1 s/w Zeichnung, 15 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 16 s/w Abbildungen
19 Tables, black and white; 1 Line drawings, black and white; 15 Halftones, black and white; 16 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-041-14440-3 (9781041144403)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Ruth Breeze is Full Professor and Scientific Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra, Spain. She has published widely on discourse analysis and professional communication, with a particular focus on language in the law and in the media. Her work combines qualitative approaches to language analysis with computational linguistics.
Magdalena Szczyrbak is Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University (Poland) and at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Pardubice (Czechia). Her research interests include discourse analysis and pragmatics, with a special focus on courtroom interaction.
Magdalena Szczyrbak is Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University (Poland) and at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Pardubice (Czechia). Her research interests include discourse analysis and pragmatics, with a special focus on courtroom interaction.
Content
1. Communicating the law: Messages, media, mediation Part 1: Communicating the work of legal institutions 2. Mediating a legal institution: Level of explanatory ambition as a measure of knowledge complexity 3. Extended reality and extended modality to communicate legal information to new audiences: Applications and perspectives 4. Drawing distinctions beyond the verbal: Intersemiotic translation, multimodality and multisensoriality in law 5. Communicating knowledge about the Constitution of the Italian Republic on https://www.senatoragazzi.it 6. Clarifying the rule of law crisis: Recontextualisation strategies in Polish legal blogs, journalism and civil discourse 7. Holding the state responsible: Discourse in human rights reports and (social) media 8. "I am proud to have served...": Language choice and argumentation in political resignation letters Part 2: Involving the public 9. Stories that bridge the gap: Storytelling to mediate legal knowledge on hate crimes 10. Communicating law to lay audiences: A multimodal analysis of student-produced legal popularization videos 11. Between emotion and cognition: Legal knowledge mediation in judges' encounters with sovereign citizens 12. Alternatively negotiating justice: Generic structure and frames in Nigerian arbitration courtroom interaction 13. "... how we will meet our climate commitments": On strategies to increase public participation in legislation in Ireland 14. Evaluating the accessibility of digital portals designed to educate Pakistani women on domestic violence and harassment laws 15. Diversity, equity and inclusion and the law