The Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, together with the International Association of English in Law and Insurance is running a workshop on teaching legal English that will take place on Wednesday 19th November 2014, from 10 am to 4 pm.

The eminent speaker, Professor Vijay Bhatia, will run a seminar/workshop entitled “Critical Genre Analysis as Interdiscursive Performance: Designing and Implementing Legal English Courses“. An abstract is shown below.

Analysis of legal genres in the past thirty years or so has focused largely on the discursive practices of legal academics, lawyers in practice, and legislative draftsmen. In all these analyses, the focus has largely been on the discursive output, written as well as spoken, of these specialists. However, very little effort has been invested in studying critical performance in legal practice as distinct from discursive practice.


In this four-hour seminar/workshop, I would like to develop some of the critical aspects of genre theory to study interdiscursive performance as a resource for the study of legal practice in all its manifestations. Drawing on the notion of inter-discursivity (Bhatia, 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2010), I will make an attempt to demystify some of the key aspects of legal practice, thus suggesting an informed approach to the design and implementation of legal English programmes.

In addition to Professor Bhatia’s workshop,

Professor Tim Grant of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University describes how he helps the police identify the writers of abusive emails, extortion letters and other criminal texts. He also asks whether this developing ability is a social good or an infringement of civil liberty.

and

Dr Krzysztof Kredens compares interpreters’ and police officers’ perceptions of the role(s) of the public service interpreter and investigates professional conflict in interpreter-mediated investigative interviews.

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Click here for the flyer, and to register visit goo.gl/UNk237. For further information contact John Pollard, Centre for Forensic Linguistics Administrator on +44 (0)121 204 5161 or email: j.pollard2(at)aston.ac.uk.