Just Words: Law, Language and Power (Language & Legal Discourse S.) - Softcover

Is it "just words" when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it "just words" when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw-up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, this text focuses on what has become a central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power. The authors show how the microdynamics of the legal process and the largest questions of justice can be fruitfully explored through the field of linguistics. Each chapter covers a language-based approach to a different area of the law, from the cross-examinations of victims and witnesses to the inequities of divorce mediation. Combining analysis of common legal events with a broad range of scholarship on language and law, this volume seeks the reality of power in the everyday practice and application of the law.

William M. O'Barr is professor and chair of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.