Episode 74 - Laura Smith-Khan and the language of law

Welcome to Episode 74 of Lexis. Jacky and Dan talk to Dr Laura Smith-Khan, Senior Lecturer - School of Law, University of New England, Australia about…How she got into the linguistics of lawWhere and how law and language overlapClarity, accuracy and the power dynamics in legal languageMigration, borders, refugees and the lawAssessing ‘credibility’ and some of the processes of refugee lawCritically assessing media discourses around migrationLaura Smith-Khan’s university profile: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/law/Dr-Laura-Smith-Khan_ProfileLaura is part of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network - more here: Law and Language – Sharing research, news and events related to law and languageas well as the Language on the Move research group - blog and podcast https://www.languageonthemove.com/author/laura/ Some of the studies and research mentioned in the show:Legal literacy in a linguistically diverse society – Language on the Move Learning to speak like a lawyer – Language on the MoveTrust and suspicion at the airport – Language on the MoveRefugee credibility assessment and the vanishing interpreter – Language on the Move The post we discussed about judges, clarity and distance: How Judges Think About Language – Language on the Move The Bluey episode mentioned is Bluey Season 3, Episode 49 | The Sign and the episode’s impact on people looking up road rules received attention from the QLD government and the media, eg What are the rules around children sitting in the front seat of a car? And is it safe? - ABC News Reading Challenges with lists of recommended books (2025 has yearly links back to 2018):Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2025 – Language on the Move Category – Language on the Move (posts organized by topic)Authors – Language on the Move (full list of contributors, each with a short bio and link to posts) Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social ContributorsLisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlanceyRaj RanaMatthew Butler Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys