INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION IN LEGAL ENGLISH EDUCATION: DEVELOPING FUTURE LAWYERS’ COMMUNICATIVE AND PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE IN A MULTILINGUAL WORLD
Abstract
The growing mobility of people, international cooperation, digital communication and cross-border legal relations have increased the importance of intercultural mediation in professional communication. For future lawyers, the ability to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries is becoming an essential component of professional competence. Legal communication is particularly sensitive to intercultural differences because legal concepts, institutional practices, professional conventions and communicative norms are closely connected with national cultures and legal traditions. This article examines the role of intercultural mediation in Legal English education and proposes a conceptual framework for developing future lawyers’ ability to facilitate understanding between participants from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The study applies a qualitative conceptual approach based on an analytical synthesis of research in intercultural communication, translation and interpreting studies, language education and legal English. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between linguistic competence, intercultural competence, pragmatic awareness and professional ethical responsibility. The article argues that Legal English education should move beyond the teaching of terminology and grammatical accuracy towards the development of mediation-oriented communicative competence. A three-dimensional model, termed the Legal Intercultural Mediation Framework, is proposed, integrating linguistic accuracy, cultural interpretation and professional-ethical judgment. The framework identifies the legal English learner as not only a language user but also a potential mediator who must explain, contextualize, reformulate and negotiate meaning while respecting the perspectives of different participants. The study concludes that systematic integration of intercultural mediation tasks into Legal English curricula can contribute to the development of more flexible, culturally aware and professionally responsible future lawyers. The proposed framework may also provide a basis for further empirical research into mediation-oriented foreign-language education in legal institutions.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
By submitting a paper to the conference organized by Academic Publishing House, the author(s) agree to the following license terms and conditions:
1. Copyright and Licensing
-
The author(s) retain the copyright of their article.
-
The author(s) grant Academic Publishing House a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, and archive the submitted material in both electronic and print formats.
-
The work will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, allowing others to share and adapt the material for any purpose, provided proper credit is given to the original author(s).
2. Author’s Responsibilities
-
The author(s) guarantee that the submitted work is original, does not infringe any existing copyrights, and has not been published or submitted elsewhere.
-
The author(s) confirm that all co-authors have approved the final version of the manuscript and agree with its submission and publication.
-
The author(s) are fully responsible for the accuracy of the data, citations, and references provided in the article.
3. Publisher’s Rights
-
Academic Publishing House reserves the right to edit, format, and make minor grammatical or layout corrections to the paper without altering its core content.
-
The publisher has the right to include the article in indexing databases, archives, and repositories such as Google Scholar, Zenodo, OpenAIRE, and other partner platforms.
-
The publisher may promote the paper through its website and official social media channels.
4. Open Access Policy
All conference papers are published as open access, ensuring free and permanent online access to the full text of all articles immediately upon publication.
5. Withdrawal and Retraction
If ethical misconduct, plagiarism, or data manipulation is detected, Academic Publishing House reserves the right to withdraw or retract the publication at any stage.
6. Acceptance of Terms
Submission of a manuscript to the conference implies that the author(s) have read, understood, and accepted these License Terms.
