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.