The 10th International Legal Linguistics Workshop (ILLWS27) is currently in preparation.

Information on the conference theme, Call for Papers, venue, dates, keynote speakers, and registration will be published on this page as soon as it becomes available.

We look forward to welcoming researchers and practitioners from around the world to the next edition of the International Legal Linguistics Workshop.

 

Programme of the 9th International Legal Linguistics Workshop

Emancipating Legal Linguistics: Hopes and Challenges for the Independence of an Interdiscipline

JUNE 18, 2026

Location: Maison des Sciences sociales et des Humanités (MSH de Dijon), 6, esplanade Erasme, Dijon, France – Forum des savoirs

08:00–09:00 | Welcome & Coffee

09:00–09:10 | Opening (AALL & laboratoire TIL): Daniel Green & Waldemar Nazarov

09:10–10:00 | Keynote – Laurent Gautier (Dijon, France): Towards a rhetoric of constitutional discourse? A study on performativity based on a German-language corpus (19th–20th centuries)

10:15–11:45 | Panel 1 – Institutions and Governance

Jan Engberg (Aarhus, Denmark): When legal institutions communicate: What types of communities do they intend to construct with their audience?

Janny Leung (Hong Kong, China): Digital Multilingualism and Platform Governance (CUP 2026)

Rasa Volungevičienė (Kaunas, Lithuania): Mens Rea as a Linguistic Construct in Lithuanian Courtrooms: The Impact of Language in Cases of Financial Crimes

11:45–12:00 | Coffee break

12:00–13:30 | Panel 2 – Legal Linguistics as a Discipline

Przemysław Kusik (Krakow, Poland): ‘Juryslingwistyka’ or ‘Legilingwistyka’? The Polish Experience as a Microcosm of the Emerging Field of Legal Linguistics

Karin Luttermann (Ingolstadt, Germany): Rechtslinguistik als Grundlagendisziplin: Sprache und Kommunikation

Waldemar Nazarov (Mainz, Germany & Dijon, France): Applying Frame Semantics to the Teaching of Legal Translation: A Legal-Linguistic Research Project at the Franco-German Law School of Paris-Panthéon-Assas University

13:30–14:45 | Lunch break: catering

14:45–16:15 | Panel 3 – Methodology and Analysis

Claus Luttermann (Ingolstadt, Germany): Rechtslinguistik als Grundlagendisziplin: Juristische Analyse menschlicher Kommunikation

Vince Liégeois (Leuven, Belgium): Comparative law terminology management: A proposal for new data-categories at the concept level

Iyad Mohammed Shawqi Jadallah (Nablus, Palestine): Bridging Legal Language and Financial Innovation: Regulatory Challenges in European Private Equity and Venture Capital

16:15–16:30 | Coffee break

16:30–17:30 | Panel 4 – Coherence and Clarity

Marlies Alber & Katharina Dezini (Bolzano, Italy): Rechtsterminologie der italienischen Rechtsordnung in deutscher Sprache für Südtirol: Kohärenz oder Improvisation?

Kevin Müller & Marlies Whitehouse (Zurich, Switzerland): Verständlichkeit von Strafbefehlen – Auswirkungen auf Gesellschaft und Behörden

JUNE 19, 2026

Location: Maison des Sciences sociales et des Humanités (MSH de Dijon), 6, esplanade Erasme, Dijon, France – Amphithéâtre

08:30–09:00 | Welcome & Coffee

09:00–09:15 | Opening (AALL & laboratoire TIL): Daniel Green & Waldemar Nazarov

09:15–10:45 | Panel 5 (Hybrid) – Application and Interdisciplinarity

Marijke de Belder & Bald de Vries (Utrecht, Netherlands): An interdisciplinary approach to the codification of language and law

Djordje Timotijevic (Belgrade, Serbia): Relier théorie et pratique : intégrer les approches théoriques et appliquées du langage juridique

Daniel Green (Rijeka, Croatia) & Peter A. Eschig (Vienna, Austria): Indeterminacy and Homogenisation in Legal Language: Drafting Privacy Policies in the Age of Generative AI

10:00–10:15 | Coffee break

10:15–11:00 | Panel Discussion: Legal Linguistics – an emancipating discipline?

11:00–11:15 | Closing

Call for Papers     

The 9^th International Legal Linguistics Workshop (ILLWS26) will be held in Dijon from June 18 to 19, 2026 and co-hosted by the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics (AALL) and the Laboratoire Texte, Image, Langage (TIL) at the Université Bourgogne Europe.

The workshop will focus around the theme

“Emancipating Legal Linguistics: Hopes and Challenges for the Independence of an Interdiscipline.”

Legal Linguistics has emerged in the Canadian tradition under the label jurilinguistique to address the difficulties of joint drafting and legal communication within a nation with two different legal languages, systems, and traditions. Since then, the study of legal language has developed into distinct subdisciplines in various academic traditions such as the Anglophone and European Legal Linguistics, the Germanist Rechtslinguistik, and the Russian yurislingvistika. These new interdisciplinary domains are often regarded as independent research areas, yet at the same time as special branches of LSP Research, and insulated from other more universal and non-abstract subject matters.

Situated within the broader field of language and law, Legal Linguistics now stands alongside more recent disciplines such as Forensic Linguistics and Language Rights and even appears in applied forms like Legal Translation Studies (LTS), juritraductologie, or Rechtstranslatologie, considering that the translation of legal texts is equally treated as a special case of translation studies. The aim of the workshop is to provide a forum for discussing innovative approaches, creating synergies and further developing the strengths of Legal Linguistics for the benefit of human beings and democratic societies.

With a growing number of volumes, workshops, and professional networks that specifically tackle legal language as a research area, this workshop welcomes papers exploring Legal Linguistics as an emancipating discipline, with a special focus on models and methodologies, specifically adapted to this field. Topics can relate but are not limited to discourse analysis, corpus-based research, specialized translation and communication strategies, AI and language technologies, legislation, comparative law, multilingualism, contrastive and applied linguistics, cognitive and epistemic aspects, as well as semantics, morphology, and syntax in law and in the context of legal methodology.

Submissions may seek to provide answers including but not limited to the following questions:

1. How can Legal Linguistics be conceptualised as an emancipating discipline within the broader field of language and law?
2. Which models, perspectives, or methodological orientations are needed to address legal language as a research object in its own right, rather than as a subsidiary of neighbouring disciplines?
3. How do different legal-linguistic traditions (e.g., jurilinguistique, Rechtslinguistik, Anglophone and other regional approaches) inform, challenge, or complement one another?
4. In which ways can research on legal discourse, legal texts, and legal communication contribute to democratic societies and the needs of human beings?
5. How can theoretical and applied approaches to legal language be meaningfully and productively connected across contexts such as legislation, interpretation and translation?
6. Which future directions, synergies, and challenges may emerge as Legal Linguistics, theoretical and applied, continues to expand across languages, legal cultures, and institutional settings?

ILLWS26 will be held in English, French, and German.

Submission Guidelines

Applicants are invited to submit an abstract of 250 words, including the title, theoretical background, research question(s), and methodology. The use of artificial intelligence tools in preparing submissions must comply with good academic practice. Submissions must be original, unpublished, and not under review elsewhere.

Please submit your abstract to daniel.green@univie.ac.at and CC wanazaro@uni-mainz.de and karin.luttermann@ku.de.

Deadline for abstract submission: 1 March 2026

Decision regarding acceptance or rejection by 31 March 2026

Conference fees EUR 50 per contributing scholar, to be transferred in full to the association bank account upon acceptance.

Kindly note that, due to the prevailing geopolitical situation, the workshop may be conducted online if circumstances require it.

Organising Committee

Daniel Green

Karin Luttermann

Waldemar Nazarov

Laurent Gautier

Martina Bajčić

Claus Luttermann

Sarah Atkins

Matthias Eder

Daniel Kopp

 

 

Bibliography

Bajčić, M. (2025). Visualizing the cross-construction of EU-norms through CJEU’s interpretative methods. In M. H. Girard, A. Guigue, & F. Prieto Ramos (Eds.), Jurisprudence – Revue Critique (No. 10, pp. 77–91). LGDJ.

Barić, S. (2013). The reasonableness principle in Italy: The practice of the Constitutional Court between interpretation and creation. Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta u Zagrebu, 63(1), 127–154.

Bhatia, V. K. (2010). Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Theoretical Perspective. Continuum.

Docrat, Z., de Vries, A., Kaschula, R. H., & Svongoro, P. (Eds.). (2025). Courtroom discourse: Practical insights from legal linguists (Vol. 6, Studies in Forensic and Legal Linguistics and Beyond). African Sun Media.

Eschig, P. A., & Calnan, R. (2022). Contract interpretation under Austrian and English law: A short comparison between civil law and common law from a doctrinal and practical legal perspective for linguists. In D. Green & L. Green (Eds.), Contemporary approaches to legal linguistics (Rechtslinguistik, Vol. 12, pp. 3–22). LIT Verlag.

Gendron, C. (1978). La jurilinguistique: Contribution à l’étude du langage juridique bilingue au Canada. Presses de l’Université Laval.

Gibbons, J. (2003). Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System. Blackwell.

Glogar, O. (2023). The concept of legal language: What makes legal language ‘legal’? International Journal for the Semiotics of Law – Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 36, 1081–1107.

Green, D. (Ed.). (2025). The future of teaching law and language (Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung, Vol. 172). Frank & Timme.

Green, D., & Green, L. (Eds.). (2022). Contemporary approaches to legal linguistics (Rechtslinguistik, Vol. 12). LIT Verlag

Lavissière, M. C., Cartron, A., & Gautier, L. (Eds.). (2025). Legal language and the sea (Foundations in Language and Law, Vol. 4). De Gruyter Mouton.

Luttermann, C., & Luttermann, K. (2020). Sprachenrecht für die Europäische Union: Wohlstand, Referenzsprachensystem und Rechtslinguistik. Mohr Siebeck.

Luttermann, K. (1999). Übersetzen juristischer Texte als Arbeitsfeld der Rechtslinguistik. In G.-R. de Groot & R. Schulze (Eds.), Recht und Übersetzen (pp. 47–57). Nomos.

Luttermann, K., & Busch, A. (Eds.). (2021). Sprache und Recht: Konstitutions‑ und Transferprozesse in nationaler und europäischer Dimension (Rechtslinguistik, Vol. 11). LIT Verlag.

Luttermann, K., Kazzazi, K., & Luttermann, C. (Eds.). (2019). Institutionelle und individuelle Mehrsprachigkeit (Rechtslinguistik, Vol. 10). LIT Verlag.

Nazarov, W. (2025). Frame-basierte Rechtsübersetzung: Frame-Semantik als ontologisches und rechtstranslatorisches Analyseinstrument am Beispiel französischer und bundesdeutscher Rechtstermini (Kontraste/Contrastes, Band 9). Peter Lang.

Šarčević, S. (1997). New Approach to Legal Translation. Kluwer Law International.

Tiersma, P. M. (1999). Legal Language. University of Chicago Press.

Vogel, F. (Ed.). (2019). Legal linguistics beyond borders: Language and law in a world of media, globalisation and social conflicts: Relaunching the International Language and Law Association (ILLA) Duncker & Humblot.

Call for Papers text: Green/Luttermann/Nazarov.

In cooperation with the Laboratoire Texte, Image, Langage (TIL) at the Université Bourgogne Europe.

AALL24: Call for papers

Die 3. Internationale Konferenz der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Rechtslinguistik (AALL24) trägt den Titel Controversies in Legal Linguistics und findet am 13. Dezember 2024 an der Rechtswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Sigmund Freud Universität Wien statt.

Konrad Lachmayer (privat)

Introducing Translanguaging as a Concept for Comparative Law
Konrad Lachmayer studied law at the University of Vienna, where he also completed his doctorate in public law. From 2013/14 to 2016, he held a research chair at the Institute of Legal Studies at the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and was a research fellow and subsequently a visiting scholar at Durham Law School (United Kingdom). Since 2017, he has been a professor of public and European law and vice-dean for research at the Faculty of Law of the Sigmund Freud University (SFU) in Vienna. He visited the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany), the Central European University (Hungary), University College Dublin (Ireland) and the University of Virginia (USA). His areas of research and teaching include comparative constitutional law as well as Austrian and European public law, particularly with regard to democratic legitimation, the rule of law and human rights.

We would like to sincerely thank our partners for their support in making this event possible:

PROGRAMME

Morning Session

CET
07:30 – 08:00	Registration
08:00 – 08:05	Daniel Green (Faculty of Law, SFU / AALL) Welcome address and opening
08:05 – 08:40	Keynote Karin Luttermann Kommunikation im Recht: Linguistische Zugänge für Verständlichkeit und Vertrauen
08:40 – 08:55	BREAK
08:55 – 09:15	Patrick Lientschnig AI-judges in conflict with legal methodology? A discussion of possible implications on the Austrian legal system
09:15 – 09:35	Tatiana Grieshofer   Informational justice: Provision of advice for lower civil courts
09:35 – 09:55	Katja Dobrić Basaneže Are metaphors in law universal?
09:55 – 10:10	BREAK
10:10 – 10:30	Annarita Felici Complex prepositions in multilingual legal language and translation
10:30 – 10:50	Simeon Oyedemi Ajiboye Constructing the knowledge of justice in Nigerian adjudicative discourses
10:50 – 11:10	Kevin Müller, Livia Sutter Funktionsverbgefüge in Deutschschweizer Rechtstexten
11:10 – 11:25	BREAK
11:25 – 11:45	Barbora Tomečková Macedonian: A controversial language and the European Union
11:45 – 12:05	Dawid Kostecki Polish legal education – what ought to be changed?
12:05 – 12:25	Waldemar Nazarov Untranslatability of law versus inequivalence of legal languages
12:25 – 13:10	LUNCH BREAK

Afternoon Session

CET
13:10 – 13:45	Keynote Konrad Lachmayer Introducing translanguaging as a concept for comparative law
13:45 – 14:00	BREAK
14:00 – 14:20	Daniel Green A short history of the Austrian Association for Legal Linguistics (AALL)
14:20 – 14:40	Sylvia Kummer Metaphoric expressions in legal discourse
14:40 – 15:00	Quetzalli Cruz Sosa Regional interpretations of human rights and business practices
15:00 – 15:20	BREAK
15:20 – 15:40	Martina Bajčić, Dejana Golenko How to empower law students in navigating legal information sources
15:40 – 16:00	Špela Arhar Holdt, Senja Pollak, Ana Marija Sobočan Linguistic accessibility of social assistance rights in Slovenia
16:00 – 16:20	Nigel Reynard Shall we, shan’t we? A review of the use of shall and will in contracts
16:20 – 16:40	Rafat Alwazna The use of automation in the rendition of certain articles of the Saudi Commercial Law into English: A post-editing-based comparison of five machine translation systems

Evening Session

17:00 – 17:20	Anna Sobota Dominance in consumer contracts
17:20 – 17:40	Ksenija Flack-Makitan, Mateja Martinjak Acronyms in professional legal writing and why the law seems to travel
17:40 – 18:00	Ondřej Glogar Tapping into a legal language corpus to explore legal terms
18.00 – 18:15	BREAK
18:15 – 18:35	Bojan Peric, Joshua Bartholdi Sachverhaltserstellung als Unterrichtsgegenstand
18:35 – 18:55	Kamran Aliyev Current challenges in legal marketing
18:55 – 19:15	Irina Gvelesiani The Anglo-American trust and the Liechtenstein Treuhänderschaft
19:15 – 19:30	BREAK
19:30 – 19:50	Michaela Rusch True colours or rainbow-washing exposed!? – Company pride in and through digital and social media reviewed
19:50 – 20:10	Melike Akay What “will” and “would” must and might imply: intentionality of modals in suicide notes versus threatening letters
20:10 – 20:30	Margret Mundorf AI legal writing literacy: A competence framework for future linguistic practice in law

Laden Sie den Call for Papers hier herunter: click here