Miguel Ángel Campos Pardillos – Language, Culture and Justice Hub

Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics
University of Alicante
Alicante, Spain
[email protected]

Read Miguel Ángel’s May 2023 Spotlight on Language, Culture and Justice.

I am a senior lecturer in English linguistics at the University of Alicante. My teaching involves mainly legal English and English-Spanish translation, mostly at a postgraduate level, where I have supervised a number of PhD dissertations related to translation and languages for specific purposes.

I obtained my certification as a sworn translator in 1994 from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and hold a master’s in translation and a PhD from the University of Alicante. My research focuses on legal language and translation and lexicology; thus, I have participated in a number of projects related to those specific fields and also to translation and language learning. I have not only published a good number of articles in indexed journals and book chapters on those areas of study, but I am also an active participant in international conferences on English for specific purposes and a member of scientific committees and journal editorial boards. I am currently working on three main areas: metaphor in legal language; legal English as a lingua franca; and the influence of ESL in the learning of legal Spanish as a third language.

I have taught in a number of training courses organized by the Spanish Council of the Judiciary, the Italian Consiglio della Magistratura, the Academy of European Law and the European Judicial Training Network (where I have been a regular participant since the launch of the “Linguistics” project in 2011 for language training for judicial cooperation). As a result of this latter activity, I have co-authored most of the handbooks published by EJTN as training materials for European judges and prosecutors. At present, I have also been entrusted with legal Spanish modules for the EJTN, both online and in face-to-face courses.

Selected Publications

Campos Pardillos, M.Á. 2023. “Learning Legal Language through Humour: I Wish You a (Reasonably) Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year (Twelve (12) Months from the Date Hereof).” In Isani, S. and M. Van der Yeught, eds. English for Specific Purposes and Humour. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 3-28.
Campos Pardillos, M.Á. 2022. “Metaphors as a Foundation for Judges’ Reasoning and Narratives in Sentencing Remarks.” In Seskauskienė, I. ed. Metaphor in Legal Discourse. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 146-168.
Campos Pardillos, M.Á. 2021. “Legitimation by metaphor: Figurative uses of language in academic discourse in favour and against EU policies.” In Mateo, J. & Yus, F. eds. Metaphor in Economics and Specialised Discourse. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 169-195.
Campos Pardillos, M.Á. 2020. “Sentencing remarks as a legal subgenre: R v Darren Osborne,” Estudios de Traducción10, 17-33.
Campos-Pardillos, M.A., 2019. “End-user agreements in videogames: Plain English at work in an ideal setting.” In Ensslin, A. & Balteiro, I., eds. Approaches to Videogame Discourse: Lexis, Interaction, Textuality. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 116-136.
Campos-Pardillos, M.A., 2019. “Fighting for integrity against a corrupting disease: the legal metaphors of sports fraud.” In Callies, M. & Levin. eds. Corpus Approaches to the Language of Sports: Text, Media, Modalities. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 161-179.
Campos, M.A. 2017. ” ‘Liaison magistrates’ and ‘contact points’ as a ‘remedy’ against ‘high levels of mistrust’: metaphorical imagery in scholarly papers on EU judicial cooperation.” Iberica 34: 231-255.
Campos, M.A. 2016. “Increasing Metaphor Awareness in Legal English Teaching”. ESP Today Journal 4, 2: 165-183.
Campos Pardillos, Miguel Ángel. 2011. “False Anglicisms in Legal and Business English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): A Process of Back-borrowing,” pp. 83-96 in Balteiro, I., New Approaches to English Lexicology and Lexicography. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 1-4438-2577-8.
Campos, M.A. 2010. “Going beyond the obvious in English for Legal Purposes: a few remarks on International Legal English as a Lingua Franca in Europe,” pp. 175-194 in Linde, A; Crespo, R. (eds.), Professional English in the European Context: The EHEA Challenge. Bern: Peter Lang. ISBN: 978-3-0343-0088-9.
Balteiro, Isabel and Miguel Ángel Campos. 2010. “A Comparative Study of Latinisms in Court Opinions in the United States and Spain.” International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 17/1: 95-118.