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Tatiana Grieshofer

Reader in Language and Law
School of English
Birmingham Institute of Media and English
Birmingham City University, UK
[email protected]

I am Reader in Language and Law with an interdisciplinary research profile in several areas of forensic linguistics (courtroom discourse, language and law) and socio-legal studies (procedural justice, self-represented litigants). My research expertise draws on combining empirical research methods with applied linguistics methodology to: (1) investigate discursive practices throughout the different stages of legal proceedings (i.e., pre-court and court stages); (2) identify communicative barriers and link them to procedural justice; and (3) challenge systemic aspects of legal practice.

I have led a number of research projects funded by the Marie Curie Fellowship scheme, British Academy/Leverhulme, Arts and Humanities Research Council, focusing on diverse aspects of civil and family proceedings. In the past, I focused mainly on communication challenges for self-represented litigants across small claims cases and libel cases in the U.S. and the jurisdiction of England and Wales. This eventually led me to investigate a grey area of the provision of legal advice online.

Drawing on corpus linguistics methods (semi-automated linguistic analysis), I was able to show that advice forums and social media groups led by unregulated lay advisers without a proven expertise create a communicative environment in which the linguistic framing of the advice jeopardises its potential usefulness and creates a false sense of injustice, arguably misleading and financially exploiting vulnerable users.

I am currently completing a project on DIY Access to Justice, exploring legal-lay discourses of county and family courts. The main focus is on identifying the disparity between court procedures and communicative practices employed by lay court users to establish best practice for eliciting evidence and ensuring that parties and witnesses can have their voices heard. I am also currently working on a monograph on Legal-Lay Discourses in Family and County Courts and a co-editing project on Communication and Professional Practice. In future, I am planning to explore the role of language and linguistic research in international criminal courts as well as examine communication practices in online courts and remote hearings.

I have a PhD degree in English Linguistics and I am a certified legal interpreter and translator with experience in interpreting and translating in police and courtroom settings.

Areas of Interest

  • Discourse of legal proceedings
  • Legal-lay discourse
  • Communication and professional practice
  • Use of corpus linguistics for socio-legal research
  • Online courts and remote hearings
  • Discursive practices and procedural justice
  • Language in family and county courts
  • Language in international law
  • Police interviews
  • Interpreting in legal settings

Selected Publications

  • Grieshofer, T. (2023, forthcoming). Reimagining communication and elicitation strategies in private family proceedings. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.
  • Grieshofer, T. (2022). Remote Interpreting in Immigration Tribunals. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.
  • Grieshofer, T. (2022). The importance of being heard: Stories of unrepresented litigants in small claims cases and private family proceedings. Language and Law – Linguagem e Direito 9(1):
    1–19.
  • Grieshofer, T. (2022). Lay Advisers in Family Law Settings: The role and quality of advice provided on social media. Social and Legal Studies.
  • Grieshofer, T., Gee, M. and Morton, R. (2021). The journey to comprehensibility: court forms as the first barrier to accessing justice. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.
  • Tkacukova, T. (2020). Changing Landscape of Advice Provision: Online Forums and Social Media Run by McKenzie Friends. Child and Family Law Quarterly 4, 397–420.
  • Tkacukova, T. (2020). Forensic linguistics and language and the law. In Schmitt, N. and Rodgers, M. (eds), An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge. 190–204.
  • Tkacukova, T. and Oxburgh, G. (2020). Patterns of Cooperation between Police Interviewers in
    Interviews with Suspected Sex Offenders. In Mason, M. and Rock, F. (eds), The Discourse of
    Police Interviews. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 136–155.
  • Tkacukova,T. (2016). Communication in family court: Financial order proceedings from the
    perspective of litigants in person. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 38(4): 430–449.
  • Tkacukova, T. (2015). A corpus-assisted study of the discourse marker ‘well’ as an indicator of
    institutional roles: Professional and lay use in court cases with litigants in person. Corpora
    10(2): 145–170.
  • Tkacukova, T. (2011). Lay people as cross-examiners: A linguistic analysis of the libel case
    McDonald’s Corporation v. Helen Steel and David Morris. The International Journal of
    Speech, Language and the Law 17(2). 307–310.
  • Tkacukova, T. (2010). Cross-examination questioning: Lay people as cross-examiners. In Coulthard, M. and Johnson, A. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. London and New York: Routledge. 333–346.

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