42 Similarity
natives to the system themselves use in describing the genre, such as “facts,” “law,”
and “policy arguments.” Learning to think like a lawyer, I suggest, is in large part
a function of learning to read, talk, and write like a lawyer; all this involves a dis-
tinctive approach to written texts and textual interpretation.
Having examined this distinctive approach exhaustively in Chapter 4, in Chap-
ter 5 we focus more explicitly on the divergent teaching styles found among the
classrooms of this study. Here we examine the variety of ways that a similar mes-
sage about legal language is conveyed in today’s law school classroom, ranging from
a class dominated by lecturing to modified Socratic teaching to a style character-
ized by shorter student-professor exchanges. This gives us an opportunity to ex-
amine the nuances of discourse structure across different classes. Although surface
features of classroom discourse differ among these classrooms, we find some in-
teresting resonances in other structural features of classroom language. These reso-
nances provide subtle structural support for the underlying message about legal
epistemology (and accompanying metalinguistic orientations) that is being con-
veyed to students.
Finally, in Chapter 6, we consider what kind of person is created through the
talk of the law school classroom, and along with this we ask about the larger view
of the world, of human selves and motivations, and of social context that are en-
tailed in this creation. Chapter 6 concludes by considering the broader social im-
plications of the underlying legal epistemology outlined in the chapters of Part II.
Here I turn to contemporary social theory to draw connections between U.S. legal
language and the wider social system in which it is embedded.