Current and future research

The year 2024 has seen the publication of my Cambridge Element Legal-Lay Discourse and Procedural Justice in Family and County Courts.

Abstract

Focusing on adversarial legal settings, this Element explores discursive practices in court proceedings which often involve unrepresented parties – private family proceedings and small claims cases. Such proceedings present the main caseload of county and family courts, but pose immense challenges when it comes to legal-lay communication. Drawing on court observations, alongside textual and interview data, the Element pursues three aims: (1) developing the methodological and theoretical framework for exploring discursive practices in legal settings; (2) establishing the link between legal-lay discourse and procedural justice; (3) presenting and contextualising linguistic phenomena as an inherent part of court research and practice. The Element illustrates how linguistic input can contribute to procedural changes and court reforms across different adversarial and non-adversarial legal settings. The exploration of discursive practices embedded in court processes and procedures consolidates and advances the existing court research conducted within the fields of socio-legal studies and forensic and legal linguistics.

Contents

  1. A foreword for forensic and legal linguists
  2. A foreword for legal scholars
  3. Introduction
  4. Legal-lay discourse
  5. Discourse of civil and family proceedings
  6. Discursive practices, procedural justice and legal participation
  7. Language data and empirical methods
  8. Discursive practices in child arrangements proceedings
  9. Discursive practices in financial remedy proceedings
  10. Discursive practices in small claims cases
  11. Concluding thoughts and future directions 
Dr Tatiana Grieshofer

What future holds

I am currently working on the edited collection on Communication and Legal Practice, under contract with CUP. With fifteen chapters, the volume covers a wide range of research methods across a range of legal areas and has wide international scope, with relevance across both common law and inquisitorial legal systems, and international legal institutions.

I am also excited about my new writing project – the monograph which will provide a detailed and overarching exploration of the role language and communication play in the systemic design of the legal system and institutions. I am working on a new theory and a set of mixed methods approaches to ensure the research can address the ever-changing socio-political pressures in the justice system and respond to diverse challenges and opportunities in the ever-evolving legal landscape.