Transcript Nebulous Skullduggery: EAP and the long arm of the law

Nebulous Skullduggery:
EAP and the long arm of the law
Dilys Thorp & Frank Cao Yu
Lectures: idiomatic language
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to tell a whopper
pushing up the daisies
…a matter for snortsville…
bureaucracy strikes in spades
a tidy sum… a pretty penny
zilch….diddly squat…piddling...not a bean
to pocket the money
willy nilly
do the donkey work
to cut corners
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the whole caboodle
no skin off your nose
sauce for the goose… sauce for the gander
the law is an ass
Sod’s law
sod this for a game of soldiers
odds and sods
a cat in hell’s chance
to put the cart before the horse
to keep mum
to sit on the fence
 It’s a no brainer
 nerds and anoraks
 a clodhopper… a halfwit…gormless…he’s
certifiable… a chinless wonder…the
blighter…. the mucker…some Jack in the
office……anally retentive…
 they wanted to guard their arses…
 …the backroom boys…
 …they screwed up… and the Judge
screwed up
Cultural References
 News of the Screws
 ‘this bit from Islington, Guardian reader of course,
walking on Hampstead Heath..’
 Uncle Sam
 Ali Baba
 to play Shylock
 to play Solomon
 Alice in Wonderland
 A Golden Oldie
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The National Trust
Sothebys
a Van Dyke… a Rembrandt… An Old Master
Stuart… Georgian… Victorian…. … Lloyd
George
a gong
Mrs Moneypenny
Ghadaffi and his merry men
The Marx Brothers
it’s Gospel
Pontius Pilate
a Delphic section
On the other hand…
 NOTE: students enjoy colourful language –
even if they don’t fully understand it.
 Colourful, with clear attitude,  more
memorable, deeper learning .
 Making lectures bland is not the solution!
Lectures: reading a slide
 Slides from law lecture
Remoteness
“Where two parties have made a contract which one of them
has broken, the damages which the other party ought to
receive in respect of such breach of contract should be such
as may fairly and reasonably be considered either arising
naturally i.e. according to the usual course of things, from
such breach, of contract itself, or such as may reasonably
be supposed to have been in the contemplation of the
parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable
result of the breach of it.”
(Hadley v. Baxendale (1854) 9 Exch 341
Per Alderson B)
88 words
Account of Profits?
“The court will have regard to all the circumstances,
including the subject matter of the contract, the purpose of
the contractual provision which has been breached, the
circumstances in which the breach occurred, the
consequences of the breach and the circumstances in
which relief is being sought. A useful general guide,
although not exhaustive, is whether the plaintiff had a
legitimate interest in preventing the defendant's profitmaking activity and, hence, in depriving him of his profit.”
(Attorney General v Blake (Jonathan Cape Ltd Third Party)
[2001] 1 A.C. 268 at 285 per Lord Nicholls)
S1: 47 words; S2: 29 words
Reading
Features of legal texts
• Long sentences with embedded relative clauses, often with little
punctuation
• Latin terms
• Technical terms (equitable estoppel; unconscionability)
• Legal jargon (‘without prejudice to’)
• Old-fashioned words not much in general use ( eg ‘save’ = except)
• Pairs of words with a reciprocal relationship ( lessor/lessee,
promissor/promissee)
• Special meanings for words in ordinary use ( eg ‘the judge determined the
facts of the case – determined=decided)
• Use of ‘shall’ to impose an obligation/duty; also in a directory sense (notice of
an appeal shall be filed in 28 days)
English for Law in HE Studies
(ESAP book)
Average sentence length: 19 words
Paragraph length: 4-8 sentences
Text length: 1 page
 Law Quarterly Review
• Average sentence length: 41words
• Paragraph length: 15 sentences
• Text length: 10 pages dense single spacing
Concluding remarks
 High English language score ≠ coping on a M level
programme
 International sts as ‘canaries’ – NS students
also challenged
 Shared responsibilities:
– Language tchg: enhance sts’ linguistic competence &
learning strategies.
– The model of support in Law – good but hard to extend
large scale
– Subject staff: good to spice things up… not necessary to
dumb down and make culturally bland. But increased
awareness of how idiom rich & culturally laden the input
is - Gloss things?
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it raised a few eyebrows
a woolly area
a spanner in the works
a spoke in the wheel
gotta be savvy
plug the holes
Language from a visit to the
Magistrates’ Court
 Idioms
• in the cold light of day
• between a rock and a hard
place
• six of one and half a dozen of
the other
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Colloquial language
• taking the mickey
• end of story
• how to play it
Non standard forms (spoken
language)
…’e was sat there
…I was stood behind her
…it wasn’t no big deal
…I went ‘ I aint drinking the beer’
…I go , ‘leave me alone’
…’e goes, “you’re not allowed to drink in this
area”