The metapragmatics of legal advice communication in the field of immigration law
Metapragmatic comments are crucial in lawyers’ attempts at managing legal advice communication with asylum
seekers. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, this paper aims to demonstrate
how/when/why textual features which tell interactants how to interpret the ongoing speech are used in the context of lawyer-client
communication in the field of immigration law. The data analysis reveals how lawyers frame the discursive conditions (i.e.
linguistic diversity, the institutional need for efficiency and the presence of emotional lifeworld concerns) of the local
interaction in the lawyer’s office. This is necessary as clients are not always acquainted with the discursive routines of the
legal consultation, nor aware of its position within the wider chain of discursive asylum events. As many aspects of the legal
advice context resemble the interactional conditions of the government-asylum seeker communication, it proves key yet challenging
for lawyers to metapragmatically signal their advocating role in a way that enables a relationship of rapport with their
client.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Operationalising “metapragmatics”
- 3.The metapragmatics of managing interaction
- 4.The metapragmatics of positionality
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
-
References
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Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Jacobs, Marie
2024.
Choosing is losing: language policy and language choice acts at the asylum law firm.
Language Policy 23:2
► pp. 119 ff.
Jacobs, Marie & Katrijn Maryns
2023.
Mediated disclosure in asylum encounters.
Multilingua 42:2
► pp. 165 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.