The pragmatics of legal advice services in a community legal centre in Australia: domination or facilitation?

Authors

  • Cristy Dieckmann Queensland Association of Independent Legal Services Inc
  • Isolda Rojas-Lizana The University of Queensland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v23i2.20291

Keywords:

discourse analysis, legal studies, lawyer-client interaction, register, colloquialism, interruption, expert advice given

Abstract

There are 220 community legal centres in Australia, many of which work on a selfhelp model that entails volunteer lawyers giving advice to clients who will then under take their own legal work. This discourse analytic study explores the discursive interaction between volunteer lawyers and clients in a community legal centre in Brisbane. The analysis investigates the presence of authoritarian versus participatory strategies in order to look at the type of power relation present in their interaction. Two discursive features that characterise lawyer–client conversations were identified as being significant in this type of free advice session: register (formal-technical/informal) and interruptions. The results show that the lawyers tend to make less use of power-related strategies than has been seen in previous studies. Instead, they use a discourse of facilitation (participatory discourse) that is expressed in their register in the form of politeness strategies, use of colloquial language and expressions of support; and in their interruptions in the form of co operative overlapping speech. It is discussed that the use of these discursive features fits with the nature of these particular interactions. That is, the legal advice offered in community legal centres could be viewed as more of an ‘expert advice giving’ rather than a traditional lawyer–client interaction.

Author Biographies

  • Cristy Dieckmann, Queensland Association of Independent Legal Services Inc
    Cristy Dieckmann has worked as a community lawyer for the past 12 years. Working with disadvantaged clients piqued her interest in lawyer communication styles and she completed a Master of Applied Linguistics through the University of Melbourne in 2012. She has presented this research to legal volunteers in Brisbane with a view to enhancing lawyers’ appreciation of different communication styles.
  • Isolda Rojas-Lizana, The University of Queensland
    Dr Isolda Rojas-Lizana is a Lecturer at the School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland. Her main areas of research are Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics. She has also research interests in Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Translation Studies. Her work has been published in Journal of Pragmatics, Languages in Contrast, Babel, JILAR and Portal among others. Her current project is called ‘Perceived Discrimination among Minorities in Australia: A Discourse Analytic Perspective’.

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Published

2016-11-21

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Dieckmann, C., & Rojas-Lizana, I. (2016). The pragmatics of legal advice services in a community legal centre in Australia: domination or facilitation?. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 23(2), 167-193??. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v23i2.20291