https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2025-2026/L_NCMPLIN003In this course, students will learn how to analyse and advise in cases where the language of government or business has turned out to be problematic. We will discuss examples of bureaucratic language and ambiguous wordings that can lead to misunderstandings and legal disputes. Students will critically assess actual court cases and apply their own analysis to the texts at issue. By the end of the course, students will have a grasp of what linguistic and discourse analytic methods (from pragmatics to corpus linguistics) to apply, depending on the nature of the language problem. They will search for problematic texts as well as related literature to help with the analysis of these texts. Because every case is different, students will be exposed to a range of different texts and methods.We will examine problems including the language of insurance policy documents; the “Plain Meaning Rule” in legislation; trademark disputes; product warnings; and matters of defamation. Theoretical ground covered will include lexical semantics, text structure analysis, ambiguity in scope, taxonomic hierarchies, referential expressions, instruction comprehensibility, speech acts, narrativity and more. . Methods applied and criticized will include: (lexical) semantic analysis, corpus analysis, Lexical substitution (or paraphrase analysis), and other analytical methods.Weekly two seminarsWeekly assignments, one presentation, and a final paper concerning a specific judicial case in which linguistic judgment was deemed crucial. Active participation in course activities is required. The end grade is based on the final paper.but includes impressions of active participation.Shuy, R., 2008, Fighting over Words: Language and Civil Law Cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780195328837. Available as e-book at VU library. Additional scientific articles to be announced on canvas.Students of the research master Humanities