Presentation by our English Studies Department at the II International Congress RELEX in Spain

Mr. Michalis Dirchalidis, postgraduate student in the MA in Applied Linguistics with TESOL, and Dr Paschalia Patsala, Head of the English Studies Department, delivered a Presentation on Forensic Linguistics (i.e. the interface between linguistics and law enforcement in an International Conference entitled “Terminology, a necessity in today's society”. The Conference was organised by the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (5th-7th October) and brought together professional terminologists, lexicographers, translators, researchers, and software developers.

Mr. Dirchalidis and Dr Patsala’s presentation, under the title “Lexical and Grammatical Terms in Legal Texts: Implications Arising from a Corpus-based Study”, was based on an innovative quantitative and qualitative analysis of the meaning conveyed in extensive legal Decisions and Orders retrieved from the International Court of Justice.

The originality of their study lies in that findings revealed significant gaps and neglected areas in the treatment of the specialised language employed or implicated in legal cases and proceedings. The linguistic knowledge and techniques applied by the two presenters were strongly welcomed by the audience, and highlighted the critical relationship between Language and Law, as well as the need for closer collaboration between linguists and lawyers within the Justice System.

With respect to the outcome of the Conference, findings of research conducted in the English Studies Department were disseminated promoting discussion on issues related to Applied Linguistics between various sub-disciplines (Computational Linguistics, Lexicography, Terminology and Discourse Analysis). Also, possibilities for future joint research in collaboration with researchers from other higher-education institutions were explored, encouraging the integration of the International Faculty ESD students into scientific networks of other Universities and Research Centres in Europe.