Legal Problem Question Answer Genre across jurisdictions and cultures

This paper seeks to analyse discourse patterns of legal opinions in two languages and cultures – namely, Legal Problem Question Answers (LPQs) in the UK academic writing context and Pareri (Ps) in the Italian professional writing context. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of discourse in this paper, based on the tenets of genre analysis, was carried out on a small collection of Model Answer texts to Problem Questions used in the two legal cultures. Findings indicate that while LPQs and Ps mostly bear similarities in the relevant rhetorical organisational patterns, they also show differences in the use of lexico-grammatical resources. It is argued that the generic and discoursal patterns resulting from the written data are determined by the writers’ disciplinary (legal) culture and language, which are appropriate to legal discourse practices of Western local jurisdictions.

► Rhetoric of legal discipline allows writers in two different languages to share same purpose of advising within community.
► Advisory genre reflects communities of practice typical of legal cultures engaged in real world legal discourse practices.
► Textual organisation shows similarities as well as differences in both cultures.
► English discourse patterns admit a much higher degree of hedging content in writing problem solving than Italian.