Law and Language
The section “Law & Language” of the Academy aims to deepen the interdisciplinary study of law, languages and culture, continuing a line of research that characterizes the Department DISTU for many years (see: E. Chiti/R. Gualdo, a cura di, Il regime linguistico dei sistemi comuni europei, 2008; La lingua del diritto in R. Gualdo, S. Telve, Linguaggi specialistici dell’italiano, 2011; R. Petrilli/R. Gualdo, a cura di, Diritto, linguaggio e letteratura, 2013; R. Petrilli, a cura di, Rappresentazioni del diritto, 2016).
The “Law and Language” section will develop two lines of research: the first one cover new migratory movements and adopt the comparative perspective to focus on the policies implemented by the EU and member countries on the management of plurilingualism and integration both linguistic and socio-cultural. The second line of research examines the formation of representations of the EU and its current crises (economic, immigration, multiculturalism, Mediterranean conflicts, etc.) in public discourse (legal, normative, political, media), global and regional, in order to identify the socio-cultural problems and tensions that accompany the process of European integration and the construction of European administrative structures. All these problems acquire relevance in the context of normative evolution imposed by the process of establishing European administrative structures, that involves the comparison of the member countries laws and produces non-traditional ways of interlinguistic and intercultural contact.
The “Law and Language” section includes scholars of law, linguistics, Italian studies, semantics and legal hermeneutics, semiology and philosophy of language, belonging to various Italian and European universities. Within the section, the collaboration between scholars of the DISTU and of the other universities pursues research and educational objectives as well as interaction with the non-academic world (the so-called Third Mission).
a) Research:
1) Analysis corpus based of the European public discourse (legal, normative, political, media) on specific topics such as: local identities/European identities, immigration, personal rights, gender equality; consumer protection. The texts of the Corpusare drawn from various sources of information, both institutional and non-institutional;
2) Implementation of plurilingual terminology corpora, starting from those already existing, with the aim of verifying if European integration produces changes in the institutional vocabulary and in the ordinary vocabulary of some representative languages, both from EU countries and from non-EU countries (Italian , French, English, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, German etc.);
3) Analysis of “linguistic policies” adopted by EU member countries in the context of intra-European dynamics, in the management of community affairs or in crisis contexts, to verify the evolution of linguistic practices of European administrative structures in the last 10 years and to investigate, by sample, if and how (in which languages) these structures dialogue with citizenship and act to adapt extra-institutional communication to different local cultural contexts;
b) Didactics:
1) Organization of the Textual Analysis Laboratory, aimed at recognizing the lexical, discursive and argumentative categories used by European public discourses (legal, regulatory, public-institutional and media texts) on the subject of the socio-cultural identities (local and global);
2) Seminars on: normative language in intercultural contexts; political argument and interculture; discursive representations of identity in the European media; evolution of linguistic policies in Europe from Maastricht onwards, with specific examples on some key themes identified in the Project;
c) Third mission:
1) Creation of a multilingual Glossary for the understanding and use of institutional communication and a Vademecum for the naming of crimes of new coins. The Glossary, the Vademecum and the Corpusof the European public discourse will be used by institutions institutions, local public bodies, sector associations, information agencies, and will be disseminated through the actions listed in the previous point (a, 2);
2) Laboratory on the Maximization of Facts, in collaboration with the Court of Viterbo;
The synergy with other research groups and partners of the “Law & Language” section of the Academy, with coinciding or compatible development objectives, may also concern one or more measures of internationalization.