On Becoming a Legal Person 137Notice that, once again, a defining moment in legal discourse and legal legiti-
macy requires the unmooring of the self from its usual coordinates, a fluidity of
voice and footing and position.^50 A deceptive metapragmatic ideology locates jus-
tice and even-handedness in this unmooring, in this constructed dialogue that at
once anchors and conceals legal hegemony. Layers of intertextual reference pro-
vide a new anchoring that furthers this process.^51 As Conley and O’Barr have noted,
“the details of legal discourse matter,” because it is in and through them that the
larger contours of the system of justice are constructed.^52 Conley and O’Barr urge
us to bring together a bigger picture generated by sociological analyses of law with
the on-the-ground understanding achieved by fine-grained study of legal language.
In these chapters, we have seen the importance of such a marriage to grasping the
message and import of legal pedagogy as it shapes incipient legal practitioners’
worldviews.
Having explored aspects of language structure and ideology that are shared
among the classrooms of the study, we now turn to examine differences and
variability.