Legal discourse across cultures and socio-pragmatic contexts

Much of the work on legal discourse has focused on its construction, interpretation, and use with particular emphasis on either language or legal content; however, very little attention is paid to context, both socio-political as well as cross-cultural, although all forms of legal discourse, spoken as well as written, are applied and interpreted in the context of what Scollon refers to as 'sites of engagement'. Drawing on a number of legal contexts, this paper will attempt to illustrate that interpretations of legal discourse invariably depend on the context of socio-pragmatic realities to which a particular instance of legal discourse applies, and hence socio-political as well as cross-cultural factors have a crucial role to play in its interpretation. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.