Language and law in the post-disciplinary landscape: A knowledge communication perspective

The collaboration of diverse networks of communities instantiates new scenarios in legal discourse and favors the emergence of multiple synchronous sites and trajectories of knowledge construction. From this perspective, the notion of communities appears noticeably multifaceted and needs to be constantly problematized. In particular, the concept of “Extended Community of Involvement” (ECI) is proposed to depict the complexity and the fluidity of the community in terms of actual and potential participants. ECIs are seen as post-communities which can be observed from a post-disciplinary perspective. In this study, the field of language and law is described as inherently post-disciplinary. Popularizing processes in legal contexts are also placed within a framework which transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries with the aim of favoring co-construction of legal knowledge on the part of the members of given communities. From this viewpoint, popularization can help non-experts to access specialized legal information and, ultimately, to access justice. Indeed, granting citizens access to justice does not simply signify their access to the matrix of rights and duties which represents the fulcrum of their relationship with the state, but the process goes much further and implies different forms and levels of engagement in the community and in polity.