Description, Action and Uptake

Abstract

This book has presented a detailed study of (socio)linguistic aspects of rights communication in one contemporary, Western, adversarial law setting. In this book, explanation has been treated not as a skill but a technology; a way of making and re-making meaning, performing and addressing identity, and shaping and facilitating social participation. By explaining institutional texts, speakers and writers not only represent texts’ institutionally sanctioned content but also accomplish a wide range of social, interpersonal and interactional goals. Indeed institutional texts’ deliverers and addressees both use them to do a great deal beyond the transactional.