Newspaper law reports are an important resource for teachers of Legal English because they provide material for the simultaneous practice of legal and linguistic skills. However, the comprehension of law report discourse is shown, in this paper, to be particularly difficult for the non-expert reader. Comparative discourse analysis of the way a particular case is reported in the All England Law Reports and the law report section of the Times and The Independent shows that the discourse structure of the newspaper law report is not adequately signaled by the linguistic conventions in the text. This produces a complex conceptual structure which makes considerable cognitive demands on the non-expert. Pedagogical suggestions are made for dealing with the textual and cognitive difficulties arising from the analysis.
Why are newspaper law reports so hard to understand?
Bowles H
1995-01-01
Abstract
Newspaper law reports are an important resource for teachers of Legal English because they provide material for the simultaneous practice of legal and linguistic skills. However, the comprehension of law report discourse is shown, in this paper, to be particularly difficult for the non-expert reader. Comparative discourse analysis of the way a particular case is reported in the All England Law Reports and the law report section of the Times and The Independent shows that the discourse structure of the newspaper law report is not adequately signaled by the linguistic conventions in the text. This produces a complex conceptual structure which makes considerable cognitive demands on the non-expert. Pedagogical suggestions are made for dealing with the textual and cognitive difficulties arising from the analysis.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
