Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution together with a sustained criticism of legal exegesis and `legalese' more generally. In the first part of the work the doctrinal history of the legal discipline and its concepts of language, text and sign are examined and assessed. In the second part the contemporary disciples of linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies are brought to bear upon the task of constructing a theory of legal discourse as a linguistics of legal power.

Preface - Table of Cases - Introduction: Law and Language - PART 1 LINGUISTICS AND LEGAL THEORY - The Science of Language - The Language of Legal Faith - The Role of Linguistics in Legal Analysis - Rhetoric as Jurisprudence: An Introduction to the Politics of Legal Language - Law as Social Discourse: A Topology of Discourse - Law as Social Discourse: Legal Discourse - Conclusion: Legal Theory and Legal Practice - Bibliography - Index