Language for Legislation and Legislation through Language

This collection teaches us how language and legislation interact to produce effective laws. It brings linguistics, lawyers, theory, and practices together to show how linguistic tools, concepts, and methodologies can be applied to improve the law's clarity, transparency, and efficiency, thus widening its social reach.
Drawing on case studies across Europe, chapters critically reflect on the dynamics of legislative drafting and the dissemination of legislation and the ways in which drafted legislation both creates laws and serves to communicate their meaning. This volume features perspectives from national and transnational examples to demonstrate the impact of varied stakeholders-legislative bodies, law interpreters, and law enforcers-on the implementation of legislation, particularly when legislative texts are translated and interpreted across different settings. Through the lens of discourse analysis, legislative texts are analyzed in lexico-grammatical and textual terms, highlighting the disparity between what is conceived and what might be expressed clearly in words and how this knowledge can inform better drafting practices. This collection charts a way forward for linguistics as a discipline to contribute to a better understanding of the nuances around effective legislative expression.
This book will appeal to scholars and stakeholders working at the intersection of language and the law, in such fields as applied linguistics, forensic linguistics, regulation, legislation, and legislative drafting.

Tímea Drinóczi is Professor of Law, Senior Researcher, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania and a Research Affiliate at the Law School, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and in the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, Hungary.
Giulia A. Pennisi is Professor of English Language and Translation at the Department of Political Science and International Relations (DEMS), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy, and Associate Research Fellow at Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies, London, UK.
Helen Xanthaki is a Professor at University College London, Dean of PGLaws at the University of London Worldwide, and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies, London, UK.