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The Willing Suspension of Disbelief and Legal Ethics: A class-room experiment on the Influence of American TV Legal Dramas on French Law Students

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 4,Issue 1, Jan. 2017

Year:

2017

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

English For Legal Purposes, Law Students, Transportation Theory, TV Legal Series

Authors:

• Chapon, Sandrine

Journal:

IJIRES

Volume:

4

Number:

1

Pages:

44-51

Month:

January

ISSN:

2349-5219

BibTex:

@article{801, author = "Sandrine Chapon", abstract = "This study is related to the teaching of Legal English and explores the didactic potential of using TV series as a learning device for law students who are embracing English as a foreign language. If TV series are imbedded in the Common Law and illustrate specialized discourses, they are fictions meant to entertain audiences. Therefore the plots contain elements that make professionals cringe. Consequently these fictions need to be handled with care by ESP teachers. Based on transportation theory, this study explores the subject of the capacity of the viewers to maintain critical distance with what they are given to watch in order to apprehend if ELP teachers should refrain from using TV legal dramas as illustrations of the specialized culture.", issn = "23495219", journal = "IJIRES", keywords = "English For Legal Purposes, Law Students, Transportation Theory, TV Legal Series", month = "JAN", note = "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/", number = "1", pages = "44-51", title = "{T}he {W}illing {S}uspension of {D}isbelief and {L}egal {E}thics: {A} class-room experiment on the {I}nfluence of {A}merican {TV} {L}egal {D}ramas on {F}rench {L}aw {S}tudents", volume = "4", year = "2017", }

Note:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Abstract:

This study is related to the teaching of Legal English and explores the didactic potential of using TV series as a learning device for law students who are embracing English as a foreign language. If TV series are imbedded in the Common Law and illustrate specialized discourses, they are fictions meant to entertain audiences. Therefore the plots contain elements that make professionals cringe. Consequently these fictions need to be handled with care by ESP teachers. Based on transportation theory, this study explores the subject of the capacity of the viewers to maintain critical distance with what they are given to watch in order to apprehend if ELP teachers should refrain from using TV legal dramas as illustrations of the specialized culture.

Full text: IJIRES-801-FINAL.pdf Online version [Bibtex]