30 Introduction
of the complicated role of legal language in mediating between the wider social
world that litigants inhabit and the narrower confines of legal institutions.^122
Summary
In the rest of this volume, I build from these literatures and from previous studies
of law school classroom methods and discourse, as well as from research on texts
and textuality, to develop a detailed analysis of law school classroom language.^123
The strands of scholarship that I have brought together in this chapter together
provide a rich foundation for an analysis of law school classroom language. First,
work on the social foundations of language urges us to examine the way language
itself might embody a worldview or epistemology. This scholarship also indicates
the importance of studying the interaction between discourse structures and pat-
terns of language use. Second, studies of language socialization have uncovered the
ways that linguistic routines and practices can shift children’s and adults’ under-
standings and orientations in the world. Studies of classroom language have re-
vealed that distinctive cultural worldviews are at work in educational processes,
and have inquired into the power dynamics at work when worldviews clash. Fi-
nally, scholarship on law school teaching has debated the relative value of distinc-
tively legal teaching genres, most notably the Socratic method. In general, studies
have suggested that law teaching is most successful in conveying legal reasoning,
though commentators have disagreed as to whether that is a desirable result. And
empirical researchers studying language in other legal domains have demonstrated
the socially powerful effects of legal language in shaping legal results. The remain-
der of the book draws these strands together in an examination of similarities and
differences in the language of eight Contracts classrooms. We begin with an expla-
nation of the methodology involved.