scholarly journals Law for Elites

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Terezie Smejkalová ◽  
Markéta Štěpáníková
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Special Group ◽  
Competent Speaker ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Advantageous Position

Abstract It has been claimed that to fully understand the law, one must know the language of normative texts and the relevant rules governing its use. It usually means that normative texts do not seem to be comprehensible enough to persons without formal legal training. In an on-going research project, we are focusing on the process of writing texts of legal regulations, conducting semi-structured interviews with those involved in drafting normative texts. In this paper, we focus on lawyers as a speech community of legal language speakers and we discuss why and to what extent this speech community may be considered an elite in a society. We show that competent usage of special – legal – language in regulating the whole society may help create a special group of persons wielding an important segment of cultural capital: the knowledge of legal language, and, in consequence, competent knowledge of law. Given the fact that this language is used to exercise (legal) power in a society, lawyers appear to be in the advantageous position of an elite. We argue that those who draft new legal texts reproduce writing rules and customs, constantly re-creating legal language as a language mostly incomprehensible to a non-competent speaker, and, in consequence, creating lawyers as an elite speech community.

UKRAINIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN CANADA: CULTURAL CAPITAL AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Antony-Newman
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
University Students ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Print Access

This qualitative research involving semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian university students in Canada helps to understand their educational experience using the concept of cultural capital put forward by Pierre Bourdieu. It was found that Ukrainian students possess high levels of cultural capital, which provides them with advantage in Canada. Specific patterns of social inequality and state-sponsored obstacles to social reproduction lead to particular ways of acquiring cultural capital in Ukraine represented by a more equitable approach to the availability of print, access to extracurricular activities, and popularity of enriched curriculum. Further research on cultural capital in post-socialist countries is also discussed.

scholarly journals The promise of personalisation: Exploring how music streaming platforms are shaping the performance of class identities and distinction

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110278
Author(s):  
Jack Webster
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Key Informants ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Music Streaming

Not only do music streaming platforms offer on-demand access to vast catalogues of licensed music, they are actively shaping what and how it finds us through personalisation. While existing literature has highlighted how personalisation has the potential to transform the part that music taste and consumption play in the performance of class identities and distinction, little is empirically known about its sociological consequences. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews with a combination of key informants and Spotify users, this article demonstrates that personalisation is undermining opportunities to achieve social distinction by taking over the labour of music curation and compressing the time needed to appreciate music for its own sake. It demonstrates that those with cultural capital at stake – in the case of this study, young, (primarily) male cultural omnivores – experience personalisation as a threat, highlighting how particular claims to social distinction are being contested in the platform age.

Język aktów prawa wewnętrznego na przykładzie statutów i regulaminów uczelni wyższych. Wybrane formy

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Demiańczuk-Popiało
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Legal Environment ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The University

Universities operate in a legal environment constituted by the external legal regulations, which – due to their universality – are not sufficient as they do not take into account the specific nature of schools. In order to make their activity coherent and well organised, universities create their own rules. The material used by the author to analyze the language of the university internal law acts are the statutes and regulations posted on the websites of the universities supervised by the minister responsible for higher education in Poland. Due to special nature of the analyzed material, its vocabulary is not very varied. A lot of space is occupied by elements typical for legal texts, such as function names or abbreviations used in the description of a legal act. The study included phenomena related to both word-formation and inflection, as well as orthography, i.e. the grammatical type and number of nouns, the tense of verbs, and the notation of certain forms characteristic of the university texts.

scholarly journals A simplification of the Consumer Rights Act. Plain legal language and legal language

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 45-71
Author(s):  
Natalia Zych
Keyword(s):  
Effective Communication ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Consumer Rights ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Average Reader ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Cost

The article examines the idea of plain legal language as a standard in creating comprehensible and effective communication in legislative acts. It features plain legal language techniques and tools used to tackle the visual and linguistic layer of legal texts. Selected techniques were implemented to experimentally modify the Polish Consumer Rights Act of 30 May 2014. The document, transformed in the spirit of plain legal language, was then submitted for assessment to lawyers as well as individuals with no legal background. The article features the results of the experiment as well as conclusions which make it possible to say whether the “simplified” act is more comprehensible to an average reader, and to assess the cost of the changes introduced in the original provisions of the law.

scholarly journals A Bridge to Portugal: Language and Identity in Bridgeport, CT

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Fabio Scetti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
American English ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Status

Here I present the results of BridgePORT, an ethnographic study I carried out in 2018 within the Portuguese community of Bridgeport, CT (USA). I describe language use and representation among Portuguese speakers within the community, and I investigate the integration of these speakers into the dominant American English speech community. Through my fieldwork, I observe mixing practices in day-to-day interaction, while I also consider the evolution of the Portuguese language in light of language contact and speakers’ discourse as this relates to ideologies about the status of Portuguese within the community. My findings rely on questionnaires, participant observation of verbal interaction, and semi-structured interviews. My aim is to show how verbal practice shapes the process of identity construction and how ideas of linguistic “purity” mediate the maintenance of a link to Portugal and Portuguese identity.

Administrative Leadership Mindset and Philosophical Approaches

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Susan S. Reutter
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Administrative Leadership ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Prison Wardens ◽  
Fourth Theme

Corrections is a multi-layered business containing all aspects of life for the employees, clients/inmates, and the general public. Therefore, the findings of the study are transferable to many types of administrators. The chapter uses a case study approach and qualitative research methods. The study findings focuses on corrections administrative leadership mindset, philosophical approaches, and practice policies.. The conceptual and theoretical approaches included effective corrections administrators are promoting the growth of social capital (e.g., social skills and relationships), human capital (employable skills), and cultural capital (e.g., community and public safety). Four state prison wardens/administrators participated in this study. Data was collected via Creswell's in-depth portrait of cases: three-part series of semi-structured interviews. Four themes emerged during data analysis. This chapter focuses on the fourth theme and the conceptual framework.

“Nero, the mustard!”

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-78
Author(s):  
Margaret Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Deep Knowledge ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
European Culture ◽  
New Meanings

This chapter considers the renaming of enslaved people in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Jamaica. Using plantation records and narrative accounts, it focuses on the classical names that made up 10–15% of inventory listings. Those who renamed newly acquired slaves after powerful historical and mythological figures from antiquity added a cruel irony to the physical practices of enslavement. They also laid claim to the cultural capital of high European culture, while mocking those denied access to it. But their claim was bogus, resting on the physical and legal power to enslave rather than on any deep knowledge of antiquity. The claim to civilizational and racial purity that underpinned it was also undercut by new meanings, including the perceptions of the enslaved: deployed in the service of racial purity, Classics became creolized. The implications can be traced in an early-nineteenth-century Johnny Newcome print and in the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt.

Privatization of Education in Contemporary Society

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-106
Author(s):  
Panagiotis Efstratios Giavrimis
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Shadow Education ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Education Development ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
The Impact

Shadow education school, as an institution in Greece, was established at the beginning of the last century. The chapter explores the impact of shadow education on the Greek educational system, learning, and on transforming public education in consumer products. A qualitative research was conducted, attempting to document Greek young adults' opinions on shadow education and the reasons they are led to it. Forty-four structured interviews were received from 11 men and 33 women. The results showed that the liberalization of education during recent decades has been accurately implemented in the institution of shadow education. Restrictive and maladapted educational policies and decisions on needs have exacerbated the purposes of shadow education development and have highlighted the exchange value of the individuals' objectified cultural capital.

Tendenzen zu einer geschlechtsneutralen Rechtssprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Slowakei

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Alena Ďuricová
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Translation Practice ◽  
Legal Texts

TENDENCIES TOWARDS GENDER – THE EQUITABLE LEGAL LANGUAGE IN GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND SLOVAKIA The article focuses on a special feature of legal language – its prevailing “masculine“ character. An initial theoretical outline of this peculiarity is followed by a comparative linguistic analysis of using masculine and feminine forms in German and Slovak legal terms. Our linguistic analysis is based on the comparison of legal texts collected from the author´s translation practice. The research has been conducted from the perspective of translatology and it presents examples documenting translation solutions with regard to issues of the gender equality in legal language.

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