Janet Giltrow Knihy

This reader has been designed to accompany Giltrow’s Academic Writing, one of the key principles of which is that there is a close connection between the processes of reading and writing academic prose. Each reading is preceded by introductory commentary, questions, and suggestions for discussion, and the book also includes a brief general introduction. At its core are examples of actual academic writing that students must learn to deal with daily and to write themselves. As newcomers to the scholarly community, students can find that community’s ways of reading and writing mysterious, unpredictable, and intimidating. Academic Reading demystifies the scholarly genres, shedding light on their discursive conventions. Throughout, it respects the student writer; it engages the reader's interest without ever condescending, and it avoids entirely the arbitrary and the dogmatic. The text has been expanded to include twenty-three selections, more than half of which are new.

This collection is about how law makes meaning and how meaning makes law. Through clear methodology and substantial findings, chapters expose the deficits of ‘literal’ meaning and the difficulties in 'ordinary' meaning, in international legal contexts and in more immediate social ones, as well as in courtrooms. Further, chapters in this volume see the challenges to national and international commitments to all speakers sharing a common meaning.