Teaching legal writingvoice, attitude, value
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Universidad de Navarra
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- María Luisa Carrió Pastor (coord.)
- Josefa Contreras Fernández (coord.)
- Françoise Olmo Cazevieille (coord.)
- Hanna Skorczynska Sznajder (coord.)
- Inmaculada Tamarit Vallés (coord.)
- Debra Westall Pixton (coord.)
Publisher: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia = Universitat Politècnica de València
ISBN: 978-84-694-6226-3
Year of publication: 2011
Pages: 319-325
Congress: Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (10. 2011. Valencia)
Type: Conference paper
Abstract
Major law firms in Europe increasingly require young attorneys to undertake complex professional tasks in English. One particularly challenging aspect of their work is that of writing letters in an appropriate style. The available teaching material focuses on formal aspects of genre, but offers less help with the complex issue of writer stance, which often conditions the acceptability of the final text. A small-scale research project was devised to gain deeper knowledge of the target texts. A three-pronged approach was used. First, material designed to teach L1 and L2 writing to law students was reviewed. This failed to provide a sufficiently thick description of writer stance. The integrated approach to genre analysis proposed by Bhatia (2004) was then applied using a small sample of letters and opinions, with a special focus on stance and attitude (Hyland, 1999; Martin & Rose, 2004). Guidelines were then proposed for future classroom use.