From Oral to Written: Phrases from the Letters of a Great 17th-Century Jurist
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Josep Capdeferro Pla
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
This article acts as a bridge between language and law in modern Catalonia. The recent publication of an extensive collective of professional correspondence by the Olot-born jurist Joan Pere Fontanella (1575-1649) offers a selection of relatively informal phrases and expressions that the jurist uses when communicating with some of his clients, the leaders of important municipalities such as Girona, Manresa, Olot, Tortosa and Vic. Using a lexical and semantical analysis of the expressions in question, we examine the legal culture of the period, the conception of lawsuits and negotiations, the perception of success and failure and the view of the system of natural obligations pervading society.
Keywords
Correspondence and letters, Fontanella, jurist, natural law, Catalonia.
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Capdeferro Pla, Josep. “From Oral to Written: Phrases from the Letters of a Great 17th-Century Jurist”. Revista de Llengua i Dret, no. 67, pp. 201-19, doi:10.2436/rld.i67.2017.2869.
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