285 research outputs found
Cracking the code of change in EU legal discourse: signifying practices shaping inclusion for the vulnerable in the digital age
No full textThe initiative of the Clear Writing Movement (Kimble 1992), targeting the democratization of communication by simplifying legal documents, has influenced the presentation of law globally. By uniting diverse philosophies of Plain Language and Easy-to-Read under the broad umbrella of text clarity and accessibility (Maaß 2020), this movement has particularly influenced the European Union’s linguistic policy (Foley 2002; Nerelius 2014; Seracini 2019). Notwithstanding this progress and the accelerated shift towards digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union’s efforts to enhance its communication for vulnerable groups (European Union 2013) remain under-examined. This research, leveraging corpus linguistics and multimodal analysis, aims to systematically uncover foundational values and thematic clusters embedded in EU legal and policy documents related to the social inclusion and rights of vulnerable populations. It explores how these features are dynamically communicated through Easy-to-Understand multimedia resources produced by Inclusion Europe and the European Commission (Bernabé and Orero 2020). Findings underscore the pivotal role of digital technology in revolutionizing the creation and interpretation of legal documents, reflecting the European Union’s proactive efforts to forge new avenues for multimodal legal communication marked by innovative signifying practices. The research concludes by highlighting the socio-semiotic and context-specific dimensions of legal discourse. Far from being merely universal and abstract, it can be adapted and reshaped to reflect societal and political stances on regulated issues. This approach can foster a sense of belonging, empowerment, and inclusivity within vulnerable communities, while also nurturing broader societal cooperation and understanding
A fascinating game of ‘what if?’ and ‘why not?’: an out-of-the-chorus proposal to EU legal translation: Review of Legal Integration and Language Diversity: Rethinking Translation in EU Lawmaking, written by Cornelis J.W. Baaij, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 312.
No full textExploring metadiscourse and rhetorical structure in Italian EFL learners' Master's Theses: Genre-analysis across learner versus professional writing, L1 versus L2 discourse
No full textBLENDED LEARNING SCENARIOS FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN COURT INTERPRETING
No full textBy drawing upon cognitive resources, professional court interpreters should uphold as a guiding principle for their choices the need to preserve the pragmatics of the ongoing interaction between legal experts and witnesses during the trial, since participants’ speech style, register and rhetorical strategies are bound to deeply influence the overall outcome of the judicial proceeding. In Italy, however, low quality standards and lack of specific training paint a grim picture of legal services with regard to the achievement of pragmatic equivalence in courtroom settings, thus suggesting the need for further research in this field. Given these premises, the aim of this paper is to propose a new didactic approach to provide adequate preliminary training for future consecutive court interpreters from English into Italian and vice-versa. In particular, after briefly discussing the issues, tasks and challenges of legal equivalence, an actual ESP course – developed in order to widen non-specialists’ pragmatic and sociolinguistic micro-skills in court interpreting – is taken as a reference for effective needs assessment, syllabus design and material selection. The rationale of this approach lies in the creation of a student-centred and rich learning environment where multi-layered teaching methodologies, audio-visual resources and corpus-linguistic evidence are tailored to the learners’ background knowledge and
increasingly approximated to real-life situations. Specifically, this paper argues for the need for a flexible syllabus suitable for enhancing students’ understanding of the spoken language of the law through the creation of ‘blended learning scenarios’ in which the analysis of popular legal movies can pave the way for more challenging activities aimed at identifying – in real-life trials – translation equivalents and pragmatic patterns from a cross-cultural perspective, with the ultimate goal of fostering students’ procedural knowledge, i.e. the ability to predict and find the best interpreting solutions in professional situations when constrained by time pressure and extremely high-level expectations
Liaison Interpreting in International Business Contract Negotiations: the Legal Interpreter at the Crossroads
No full textIn the ever-growing and competitive global marketplace, companies must look for new ways to gain a competitive advantage. One of these ways is to negotiate provisions orally while drafting the contract in istanti with four hands. This practice – meant to foster trust, cooperation, and fair understanding – has made it imperative to seek collaboration with interpreters to navigate diverse laws, business practices, and above all, cultural differences. In this more nuanced, deeply interpersonal form of transaction, liaison interpreting in contract negotiations presents itself as a complex, challenging, and fruitful area of expertise. Yet, no previous study has explored this domain, whose originality for interpreters lies in that it combines two challenging aspects: the legal language of contracts with cooperative negotiation strategies in the business field. To address this gap, the study examines an authentic, interpreter-mediated meeting between German buyers and an Italian ceramic tile manufacturer. In this scenario, English serves as the lingua franca for the negotiation. Drawing on Wadensjö’s (1998) framework for interpreting roles and renditions, along with Duranti’s (2004) concept of Agency for related ethical and socio-cultural aspects, the interpreter’s choices are ultimately evaluated from a purely unbiased and descriptive perspective within the cognitive-pragmatic framework of Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986). Findings reveal that legal interpreters need to constantly redefine and reconsider their role in this “hybrid” setting (Bhatia and Nodoushan 2015), thus blurring the boundaries between the purist vision of the impartial interpreter tasked with addressing crucial legal matters, and the involved cross-cultural mediator engaged in renegotiating identities and meanings when mutually beneficial business outcomes are expected to be achieved. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research, emphasizing the need to abandon broad interpreting clichés in favour of defining ad hoc quality standards for this area of expertise lying at the crossroads between legal and business domains
From the Eternal to the Temporal: Beauty in Italian Art and Literature
No full textThis lecture endeavours to trace the evolution of the concept of beauty in Italian art and literature from the 13th to the 16th century. Utilising Immanuel Kant’s theoretical framework from his “Critique of Judgement”, which distinguishes between the ‘agreeable’ and the ‘beautiful,’ the analysis illustrates how perceptions of beauty transitioned from the medieval synthesis of divine, monstrous, and ethical aesthetics to more human-centred and naturalistic representations seen in the Renaissance. The analysis begins with an examination of late medieval art and Dante’s integration of aesthetics and ethics into literature, highlighting his innovative use of poetic and visual symbolism to navigate complex theological and philosophical ideas. The study then transitions to the Renaissance era, where art and literature began to emphasise naturalism and human emotion, significantly influenced by advancements in techniques such as perspective. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli are discussed to illustrate how their works not only reflected natural beauty but also incorporated deeper spiritual and philosophical meanings. Furthermore, the lecture encourages students to analyse how the dimensions of the monstrous and terror in Dante’s hell, represented by figures such as Charon, Minos, and Lucifer, are depicted in both medieval and Renaissance art. The analysis concludes with a direct comparison between Giotto’s ‘The Last Judgement’ in the Scrovegni Chapel and Michelangelo’s ‘The Last Judgement’ in the Sistine Chapel, from which a clear and precise comparison between late medieval and Renaissance art emerges. This evolution in artistic representation mirrors the broader transition in Renaissance thought, moving from a strictly divine focus to incorporating the human and the temporal, thus exemplifying the essence of the presentation title, ‘From the Eternal to the Temporal’
Oscar Wilde, una voce delle prigioni: Dikaiosyne come valore universale di umanità
No full text“The laws under which I am convicted are wrong and unjust”, partendo da questa citazione autobiografica di Oscar Wilde il presente intervento è volto a indagare l’eterno ritorno del diritto naturale quale giudice e guida di quello positivo nel componimento The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). In particolare, attraverso la descrizione dello stato di alienazione a cui i detenuti erano sottoposti, privati dal sistema penale di ogni diritto civile compreso quello al nome e alla dignità, l’autore crea uno spazio di riflessione critica, instillando nella coscienza del lettore, come un moderno Prometeo che tanto richiama il mito narrato da Platone nel Protagora, un’idea universale di Dike, identificabile nell’umana compassione che l’uomo dovrebbe trasfondere nella creazione e nell’applicazione della legge
MASTERING NUMBERS IN LEGAL DISCOURSE: PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVES AND TRANSLATION ISSUES
No full textThe present article aims at exploring the issue of intertextuality with reference to the specific usage of numbers in legal discourse. In this regard, the analysis of legal citations seems to be of particular interest to legal linguistics and legal translation as it concerns semantic, pragmatic and stylistic issues related to legal language. These aspects are discussed by analyzing European legislation and judicial decisions issued by the European Court of Human Rights, in order to demonstrate that legal citations are used to eliminate internal contradictions within the whole legal framework, thus reinforcing the systemic character of the law. Finally, this research focuses on the usage of numbers to achieve intelligibility and user-friendly layout in legal documents, as suggested by the Plain Language Movement
Intrageneric and Interdisciplinary Variation in Abstracts: Exploring Novice versus Professional Writing in the Global Context of EAP
No full textIntrageneric and Interdisciplinary Variations in MA Thesis Abstracts: Emerging Voices in Glocal Academic Landscapes
No full text- …
