Introduction : more than (just) words

It is accepted today that the role of language is not merely to provide logic-based representations of reality and the idea of “saying as doing” underlies much of contemporary linguistic thinking. Naturally, the ability to“do things with words”is invariably tied to an individual’s social role and the sociocultural field within which the interaction is embedded, and the law is no exception. The juridical field, as argued by Bourdieu (1987),1is a structured universe with its own norms,values and practices, and the site of a contest for control in determining the law (Bourdieu 1987: 817). The recognition of what has value and what does not, depends on the legal framing and is a field-specific construction. Any extra-legal action, system or thought is reconfigured within legal terminology and its status is not acknowledged unless it is legally validated (Leader 2008: 98). The courtroom thus be-comes an arena within which legal rules transform less constrained relational accounts into more organised cause-and-effect descriptions, and where some voices are recognised, while others silenced or dismissed (Mertz and Yovel 2005).