Review of Just Words Law, Language and Power

DISPUTING: NATURAL HISTORY, CROSS-CULTURAL AND
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
DISPUTING: NATURAL HISTORY, CROSS-CULTURAL ANDHISTORICAL PERSPECTIVESIn the remaining three substantive chapters of the book, C&O.B address three further areas in which language and law scholarship has been focused, again highlighting the role for microlinguistic analysis in understanding how the macrodiscourse of the legal system operates’Chapter 5, .A Natural history of disputing., examines several studies which have analysed different types of dispute, and provides another example of how this book .challenge[s] existing ways of thinking about legal processes by paying closer attention to their linguistic details’ (p. 97). Taking the logical model of disputes developed by Felstiner, Abel and Sarat (1980), C&O.B add Pomerantz’s (1978) and Jefferson’s (1980, 1985, 1988) conversational analysis approach, as well as some of their own linguistic and ethnographic research, to develop a new model of disputes, which they term .a natural history of disputing..In Chapter 6, .The discourses of law in a cross-cultural perspective., C&O.B .take on. legal anthropology, arguing that the ethnography which is at the basis of legal anthropology is often not linguistically rich enough to support the claims made. They illustrate this concern by drawing primarily on the work of Goldman (1986, 1993) with the Huli in Papua New Guinea. In particular they highlight Goldman’s analysis of the traditional legal process which ensued over the death of a woman, particularly villagers’ arguments over whether or not the death had been accidental. Goldman’s detailed linguistic analysis enables him to contradict the widely held anthropological view that non-Western societies do not have notions of accident. .Goldman’s linguistic analysis suggests an alternative presumption: that all cultures have notions of accident but use different linguistic strategies to express them. (p. 113).Chapter 7, .The Discourses of Law in Historical Perspective., uses two examples to show how linguistic analysis of archival historical material enables the examination of .how legal power was exercized and reproduced in other times’ (p. 116). These two examples are Davis’ (1987) study of the requests for pardons submitted to the King of France in the sixteenth century for convicted felons, and Evans Grubbs’ (1995) analysis of legislation pertaining to marriage and the family in early fourthcentury Rome. C&O.B summarize these studies showing how .historians working with tests from past societies make the same point that [they] have made throughout the book: that society’s big picture . its macrodiscourse . is best understood by examining the little details of a society’s linguistic practice . its microdiscourse. (p. 128).
CONCLUSIONThe final chapter recapitulates the main theme of the book, and briefly discusses Sheldon and Johnson’s (1994) study of children’s acquisition of disputing discourse as well as Mertz’s (1996, nd) study of the .fundamentally linguistic process’ of legal education. JW concludes in a very practical way, showing how .microlinguistic analysis is an extraordinary tool for studying social problems’ (p. 138). The authors briefly describe an interdisciplinary discourse-based ethnographic study of the state of the adversary system which they and other social scientists have been invited to carry out by members of the Colorado Bar: .we and the other researchers share the general perception that the adversary system is out of control and hope that our work can conBook tribute to its diagnosis and treatment. More broadly, we hope that other people responsible for law reform will also come to appreciate that intelligent and effective efforts to improve legal practice require a great deal of sensitivity to the language that constitutes the practice.. (p. 138)
SUMMARY EVALUATIONJW is a very nicely produced, inexpensive book, and its clear organization and pithy writing style, combined with the absence of typographical errors, make this book very readable. Each chapter presents summaries of important research, which are bound to entice many readers to read the original works’ Following critical analysis of the work they summarize, C&O.B provide thought-provoking chapter conclusions, to which this review can not do justice.Although the authors say (p. 6) that JW is not intended as a textbook, they do hope that it can ‘serve as the core of a law and language class’, which in my usage would mean that it is a set textbook, but not the only one. While it does not cover the whole field of law and language/language and law, and is unlikely to deal with all the topics a teacher would want to include, it gives cohesion and direction to the field, and cogently demonstrates how .the law and language field [is] sending a coherent message about law, language and power. (p. 5).In addition, Chapters 2.5, which make up nearly half the book, will be of considerable interest beyond the field of language and the law, to students and scholars of language and gender.Not everyone will be entirely satisfied with Just Words’ Being short, it does not cover all possibly relevant topics, and being eclectic as well, it does not try to deal with all research in the topics it does cover. And some readers will undoubtedly want more bibliographic references to substantiate some of the claims made. To my mind the disadvantage caused by an arguable lack of comprehensive treatment of some of their topics is generally outweighed by the advantage of the clear, crisp and uncluttered presentation of the central argument of the book: that .the details of legal discourse matter. (p. 129).Students and scholars of language and law/forensic linguistics, sociolinguistics, legal studies, sociology, anthropology and gender studies will enjoy this book. More specifically, those of us in the area defined by C&O.B as law and language have in this inspiring book the articulation of an important unifying theme and a clear conceptual framework in which to situate future research.
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Diana EadesDepartment of English as a Second LanguageUniversity of Hawaii