Legislation and Language Project - Language
Law and Linguistics select bibliography
Bhatia, Vijay K. 1987. Textual-Mapping in British Legislative Writing. World Englishes 1/1, 1-10.
Bhatia, Vijay K. 1993. Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
Bhatia, Vijay K. / Candlin, Christopher N. / Wei, Sandy 2001. Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts: A Preliminary Study. Research Group Report. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.
Bhatia, Vijay K. / Engberg, Jan / Gotti, Maurizio / Heller, Dorothee (eds) 2005. Vagueness in Normative Texts. Bern: Peter Lang.
Campbell, L. 1996. Drafting Styles: Fuzzy or Fussy? ELaw. Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law 3/2. Available at http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v3n2/campbell.html.
Charrow, Veda R. / Crandall, Judith A. 1978. Legal Language: What is it and What Can we Do about it?. Arlington (Virginia): American Institutes for Research and Center for Applied Linguistics.
Crystal, David / Davy, Derek 1969. Investigating English Style. London: Longman.
Driedger. E.A. 1982. Legislative Drafting Style: Civil law versus Common law. In Gémar, Jaen-Claude (ed.) Langage du droit et traduction / The Language of the Law and Translation. Montreal: Linguatech / Conseil de la Langue Française, 63-81.
Endicott, Timothy A.O. 2000. Vagueness in Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fjeld, Ruth V. 2001. Interpretation of Indefinite Adjectives in Legislative Language. In Mayer, Felix (ed.) Languages for Special Purposes: Perspectives for the New Millennium. Tübingen: Narr, 643-650.
Gotti, Maurizio 32011. Investigating Specialized Discourse. Bern: Peter Lang.
Gotti, Maurizio / Dossena, Marina (eds) 2001. Modality in Specialized Texts. Bern: Peter Lang.
Gustafsson, Marita 1975. Some Syntactic Properties of English Law Language. Turku: University of Turku, Department of English.
Holmes, Janet 1984. Modifying Illocutionary Force. Journal of Pragmatics 8, 345-365.
Lötscher, Andreas 2008. Conceptual and Textual Structure in Legislative Texts. In Wagner / Cacciaguidi-Fahy (eds), 129-150.
Majambere, E. 2011. Clarity, Precision and Unambiguity: Aspects for Effective Legal Drafting. Commonwealth Law Bulletin 37/3, 417-426.
Maley, Yon 1994. The Language of the Law. In Gibbons, John (ed.) Language and the Law. London: Longman, 11-50.
Mellinkoff, David 1963. The Language of the Law. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Murgia, Stefano / Rizzoni, Giovanni 2002. How Politics can be Used to Improve the Quality of Legislation. Clarity 47, 20-22.
Poscher, Ralf 2012. Ambiguity and Vagueness in Legal Interpretation. In Tiersma / Solan (eds), 128-144.
Robertson, Colin 2010. Legislative Drafting in English for Non-native Speakers: Some Do’s and Don’ts (with Reference to EU Legislation). ESP across Cultures 7, 147-163.
Robertson, Colin 2012. The Problem of Meaning in Multilingual EU Legal Texts. International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse 2/1, 1-30.
Tiersma, Peter M. 1999. Legal Language. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Tiersma, Peter M. / Solan, Lawrence M. (eds) 2012. The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wagner, Anne / Cacciaguidi-Fahy, Sophie (eds) 2008. Obscurity and Clarity in the Law: Prospects and Challenges. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Warren, Beatrice 1988. Ambiguity and Vagueness in Adjectives. Studia Linguistica 42/2, 122-172.
Watson-Brown, A. 2012. In Search of Plain English – the Holy Grail or Mythical Excalibur of Legislative Drafting. Statute Law Review 33/1, 7-23.
Law and linguistics select bibliography (PDF)