25 - 2013

Des années 1970 au nouveau millénaire : essor de la jurilinguistique ou linguistique juridique

Chiara Preite

Abstract

Issues concerning legal language have attracted the interest of philosophers and linguists since the early seventies, leading to a vast upsurge of descriptive studies. A new discipline known as Jurilinguistics is developed in Canada in the eighties and the nineties linking linguistics and legal sciences, with a special focus on legal translation. In an entirely different legal setting, French scholars favour the term Legal linguistics, which clearly speaks to the necessary overlap and close tie between legal studies and linguistics. In this context, this paper aims to trace the development of the discipline from its beginnings until more recent developments. Focusing on research carried out in Canada and in francophone Europe, we shall try and answer the question as to whether the two terms, Jurilinguistics and Legal linguistics, represent substantial differences at a methodological level or, rather, mere diatopic variants for one and the same discipline.

Key words

Legal language, legal linguistics, jurilinguistics

October 28, 2013
  25 - 2013