What challenges face jurisdictions that attempt to conduct law in two
or more languages? How does choosing a legal language affect the way
in which justice is delivered? Answers to these questions are vital
for the 75 officially bilingual and multilingual states of the world,
as well as for other states contemplating a move towards
multilingualism. Arguably such questions have implications for all
countries in a world characterized by the pressures of globalization,
economic integration, population mobility, decolonization, and
linguistic re-colonization. For lawyers, addressing such challenges is
made essential by the increased frequency and scale of transnational
legal dealings and proceedings, as well as by the lengthening reach of
international law. But it is not only policy makers, legislators, and
other legal practitioners who must think about such questions. The
relationship between societal multilingualism and law also raises
questions for the burgeoning field of language and law, which
posits--among other tenets--the centrality of language in legal
processes. In this book, Janny H.C. Leung examines key aspects of
legal multilingualism. Drawing extensively on case studies, she
describes the implications of the legal, practical, and ideological
dilemmas encountered in a given country when it becomes bilingual or
multilingual, discussing such issues as: how legal certainty and the
linguistic ideology of authenticity may be challenged in a
multilingual jurisdiction; how courts balance the language preferences
of different courtroom participants; and what historical,
socio-political and economic factors may influence the decision to
cement a given language as a jurisdiction's official language.
Throughout, Leung elaborates a theory of "symbolic jurisprudence" to
explore common dilemmas found across countries, despite their varied
political and cultural settings, and argues that linguistic equality
as proclaimed and practiced today is a _shallow_ kind of equality.
Although officially multilingual jurisdictions appear to be more
inclusive than their monolingual counterparts, they run the risk of
disguising substantive inequalities and displacing real efforts for
more progressive social change. This is the first book to offer
overarching discussion of how such issues relate to each other, and
the first systematic study of legal multilingualism as a global
phenomenon.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780190930608
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter