Discursive Constructions of Consent in the Legal Process

ISBN-13: 9780199945351 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 344 str.

Susan Ehrlich; Diana Eades; Janet Ainsworth

Opis

As a linguistically-grounded, critical examination of consent, this volume views consent not as an individual mental state or act but as a process that is interactionally-and discursively-situated. It highlights the ways in which legal consent is often fictional (at best) due to the impoverished view of meaning and the linguistic ideologies that typically inform interpretations and representations in the legal system. The authors are experts in linguistics and law, who use diverse theoretical and analytical approaches to examine the complex ways in which language is used to seek, negotiate, give, or withhold consent in a range of legal contexts.

Authors draw on case studies, or larger research corpora or a wider sociolegal approach, in investigations of: police-citizen interactions in the street, police interviews with suspects, police call handlers, rape and abduction trials, interactions with lay litigants in a multilingual small claims court, a restorative justice sentencing scheme for young offenders, biomedical research, and legal disputes over contracts.

Recenzje

This exhaustive and timely overview of consents position within our criminal and civil legal systems in the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands should serve as something of a call to arms for those of us working in all areas of forensic linguistics and language and law. It is wholly consistent with an understanding of our role as one which seeks to protect human rights and be driven by questions of social justice (Eades, 2010: 422), and sheds further light on how we as linguists can contribute to such an effort.

O autorze

Susan Ehrlich is Professor of Linguistics at York University in Toronto. Diana Eades is Adjunct Professor at University of New England. Janet Ainsworth is the John D. Eshelman Professor of Law at Seattle University and Research Professor in the Research Center for Legal Translation at China University of Political Science and Law.