Full Description
This book explores the concept of human rights as constructed in language, shedding light on discursive and professional practices at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), as differentiated from other judicial institutions offering human rights defence mechanisms. It unveils the system of genres at the ECtHR adopting a holistic outlook, which caters for an interdisciplinary readership including both language and law professionals. The genres, along with the underlying professional practices and interdiscursive mechanisms, are described following the lifecycle of cases, starting from the initial application to the Court and ending with institutional press releases and execution of judgments, which foster greater democratic participation. The Court is depicted through its plurality of voices and stakeholders, acknowledging the non-monolithic nature of judicial discourse. The work follows the knowledge migration path from national into international justice and traces how national, and linguistically divergent, elements are recontextualized in a supranational context. It problematizes the coexistence of institutional and outsourced legal translation as well as their potential effects on the discourse of human rights. The book covers issues of legal terminology, phraseology, dialogism, pragmatics and knowledge dissemination dynamics. The study will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and translators working in the areas of law and language, linguistics, Translation Studies and Genre Studies.
Contents
Preface; Part I: The discourse of human rights across institutions; 1. The discourse of human rights across languages, perspectives and institutions; 2. Constructing human rights discourse: insights from legal terminology and phraseology; 3. The European Court of Human Rights: context, genres and languages; Part II: The European Court of Human Rights: inception of cases and the voices of human rights; 4. Application: the right to individual petition and plain language; 5. Case communication: negotiating supranational terminology through institutional translation; 6. Written observations: the duelling construction of reality; Part III: The language of judges at the ECtHR; 7. Judgment: combining genre, patterning and legal reasoning perspectives; 8. Separate opinions: legal, linguistic and pragmatic insights; Part IV: The life of cases beyond and after the ECtHR; 9: Beyond case-law: disseminating convention-related knowledge
