Polish vs. American Courtroom Discourse brings together the fields of discourse analysis and socio-legal studies to identify, illustrate and explain the cross-cultural similarities and disparities between the inquisitorial and adversarial procedures of witness examination in criminal trials.

This volume is the second part of a project which hosts an interdisciplinary discussion about the relationship among law and language, legal practice and ordinary conversation, legal philosophy and the linguistics sciences. An international group of authors, from cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law question about how legal theory and pragmatics can enrich each other. In particular, the first part is devoted to the analysis of how pragmatics can solve problems related to legal theory: What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and its relationship with moral, and, in particular, about the eternal dispute between legal positivism and legal naturalism? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and/or legal disagreements? The second part is focused on legal adjudication: it aims to construct a pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal trial and/or to test the tenure of the traditional pragmatics tools in the field. The authors face questions such as: Which interesting pragmatic features emerge from legal adjudication? What pragmatic theories are better suited to account for the practice of judgment or its particular aspects (such as the testimony or the binding force of legal precedents)? Which pragmatic and socio-linguistic problems are highlighted by this practice?

Focusing on adversarial legal settings, this Element explores discursive practices in court proceedings which often involve unrepresented parties – private family proceedings and small claims cases. Such proceedings present the main caseload of county and family courts, but pose immense challenges when it comes to legal-lay communication. Drawing on court observations, alongside textual and interview data, the Element pursues three aims: (1) developing the methodological and theoretical framework for exploring discursive practices in legal settings; (2) establishing the link between legal-lay discourse and procedural justice; (3) presenting and contextualising linguistic phenomena as an inherent part of court research and practice. The Element illustrates how linguistic input can contribute to procedural changes and court reforms across different adversarial and non-adversarial legal settings. The exploration of discursive practices embedded in court processes and procedures consolidates and advances the existing court research conducted within the fields of socio-legal studies and forensic linguistics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The book presents a comprehensive reconceptualization of Geert Hofstede’s well-known concept of power distance, applying the theory to the specific case of judge–witness courtroom interactions in Polish regional courts. In the light of the detailed critique of Hofstede’s original approach to power distance, the book first carefully develops a three-level concept of power distance, including personal preferences concerning the realization of power relations (subjective level); rules, practices and spatio-architectural arrangements underlying power relations (organizational level); and individual demeanors that can, in practice, increase or decrease the asymmetry between parties to a power relation (interactional level). This reconceptualization provides a universal conceptual apparatus that is applicable to various social settings, but the authors have used it in extensive qualitative and quantitative research focused on courtroom interactions. After laying the theoretical foundations, the book details the elements of judge–witness courtroom interactions (both verbal and non-verbal) that contribute to establishing power distance between judge and witness. These were identified over 6 months of observational research conducted in 2018 in the Kraków regional courts. Lastly, the book addresses the issue of the relationship between the subjective level of power distance and opinions that laypeople can have concerning a judge’s demeanor in the courtroom environment. To do so, it describes specific quantitative research that involved the creation of original film clips depicting witness questioning by the judge in a courtroom in three power distance situations. Offering a coherent framework for examining various interpersonal relations in legal contexts and illustrating how the framework can be applied on the courtroom interactions example, the book will appeal to a wide range of legal practitioners and academics. It also allows scientists outside the legal field to gain a new and broad understanding of power distance that they can easily apply in their respective fields. Furthermore, it provides non-academics with insights into courtroom interactional dynamics, as exemplified by the discussion of Polish judicial practice.

The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace provides a comprehensive survey of linguistic research on language in the workplace written by top scholars in the field from around the world. The Handbook covers theoretical and methodological approaches, explores research in different types of workplace settings, and examines some key areas of workplace talk that have been investigated by workplace researchers. Issues of identity have become a major focus in recent workplace research and the Handbook highlights some core issues of relevance in this area, such as gender, leadership, and intercultural communication. As the field has developed, applications of workplace research for both native and non-native speakers have emerged. Insights can inform and improve input from practitioners training workers in a range of fields and across a variety of contexts, and the Handbook foregrounds some of the ways workplace research can do this. This is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students interested in learning more about workplace discourse.

This edited volume sets out to explore interdisciplinarity issues and strategies in Public Service Interpreting (PSI), focusing on theoretical issues, global practices, and education and training. Unlike other types of interpreting, PSI touches on the most private spheres of human life, making it all the more imperative for the service to move towards professionalization and for ad hoc training methods to be developed within higher institutions of education. PSI is a fast-developing area which will assume an increasingly important role in the spectrum of the language professions in the future. An international, dynamic and interdisciplinary exploration of matters related to PSI in various cultural contexts and different language combinations will provide valuable insights for anyone who wishes to have a better understanding when working as communities of practice. For this purpose, the Editors have collected contributions focusing on training, ethical issues, professional deontology, the role and responsibilities of interpreters, management and policy, as well as problems and strategies in different countries and regions. This collection will be a valuable reference for any student or academic working in interpreting, particularly those focusing on Public Service Interpreting anywhere in the world.

A judge’s role is to make decisions. This book is about how judges undertake this task. It is about forces on the judicial role and their consequences, about empirical research from a variety of academic disciplines that observes and verifies how factors can affect how judges judge. On the one hand, judges decide by interpreting and applying the law, but much more affects judicial decision-making: psychological effects, group dynamics, numerical reasoning, biases, court processes, influences from political and other institutions, and technological advancement. All can have a bearing on judicial outcomes. In How Judges Judge: Empirical Insights into Judicial Decision-Making, Brian M. Barry explores how these factors, beyond the law, affect judges in their role. Case examples, judicial rulings, judges’ own self-reflections on their role and accounts from legal history complement this analysis to contextualise the research, make it more accessible and enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of judicial decision-making. Offering research-based insights into how judges make the decisions that can impact daily life and societies around the globe, this book will be of interest to practising and training judges, litigation lawyers and those studying law and related disciplines.

* provides a comprehensive overview of cultural issues relating to translation, interpreting and mediation * covers a wide range of theories and contributions from different disciplines, allowing for an in-depth understanding of what cultural differences are based on, how they work in cross-cultural communication, what challenges they may give rise to, and how these challenges may be overcome in a professional context *includes a large number of examples, situations and illustrative figures, which makes it engaging and broadly relevant to many contexts *new edition includes more examples from a wider range of languages and situations which makes it engaging and broadly relevant to many contexts

This present book addresses language and its diverse forms in an array of professional and practical contexts. Besides discussing the intricacies of specialized settings such as legal, medical, technical or corporate, the collection also focuses on the role of education in relation to professional contexts ranging from challenges in professional university teaching and translation didactics to business environment requirements.