Caroline Laske, a research fellow at the Ghent Legal History Institute (Belgium) and the holder of a Heinz Heinen fellowship at the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies (Germany), has published Law, Language and Change: A Diachronic Semantic Analysis of Consideration in the Common Law (Brill, 2020):
–Dan ErnstIn this monograph, Caroline Laske traces the advent of consideration in English contract law, by analysing the doctrinal development, in parallel with the corresponding terminological evolution and semantic shifts between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is an innovative, interdisciplinary study, showcasing the value of taking a diachronic corpus linguistics-based approach to the study of legal change and legal development, and the semantic shifts in the corresponding terminology. The seminal application in the legal field of these analytical methodologies borrowed from pragmatic linguistics goes beyond the content approach that legal research usually practices and it has allowed for claims of semantic change to be objectified. This ground-breaking work is pitched at scholars of legal history, law & language, and linguistics; and is of importance to scholars of private law working on promises and contract.
