Lexis 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 law
Where and how law and language overlap
Clarity, accuracy and the power dynamics in legal language
Migration, borders, refugees and the law
Assessing ‘credibility’ and some of the processes of refugee law
Critically assessing media discourses around migration
Laura Smith-Khan’s university profile: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/law/Dr-Laura-Smith-Khan_Profile
Laura is part of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network - more here: Law and Language – Sharing research, news and events related to law and language
as 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 Move
Trust and suspicion at the airport – Language on the Move
Refugee 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
Contributors
Lisa 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/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew 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