The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

The Role of Language in Socialization
In studying how children are socialized to become members of their societies and
cultures, scholars such as Bambi Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs have demonstrated that
language use provides a central mechanism by which this process is accomplished.
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It is through particular linguistic practices and exchanges that children form a vision
of their world, acquiring key frameworks within which emotions, cognitive under-
standings, and fundamental notions of the self operate. To take one small example,
in Samoa children are urged from very early ages to recognize and call out to other
villagers by name; as they walk with children, caregivers engage in ongoing linguistic
instruction designed to inculcate attentiveness to others and the beginnings of pro-
ficiency in complex greeting routines that indicate respect.
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 This and many other
kinds of exchanges build “affective” or emotional competence in these small initiates,
competence that they will need in order to take their places as mature and capable
members of their society. Conceptions of who they are, their place in society, what
range of emotionality is appropriate in given settings, and much more are formed in
an ongoing stream of linguistic routines and interactions with adults.
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This process of language socialization is not confined to children’s language. As
we shall see in Chapter 4, the linguistic routines used by some law school professors

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Introduction
have affinities with those used in socializing children among the Kaluli of New
Guinea. Like the first linguistic socialization of children, the training of adults to a
new social identity (sometimes spoken of as “secondary socialization”) also involves
the use of language to orient initiates to a social world.
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 For example, one study of
training in medical school revealed the powerful reorienting effect of the first-year
experience in the gross anatomy lab, an experience designed to impart the “‘clini-
cal attitude,’ the attitude it is hoped students will master in order to behave intel-
ligently and gracefully in the face of calamity.”
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 Common cultural taboos centering
on death and the body are violated in the work of the anatomy lab, and prior atti-
tudes and opinions are jarred as medical students begin the transformative task of
becoming doctors.
This process of breaking down prior beliefs and assumptions during a process
of adult (or postprimary) socialization has been analyzed by scholars studying other
kinds of rituals designed to move members of societies to new statuses.
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 In his
analysis of rites of passage across a number of societies, Turner first describes a phase
during which neophytes, or “initiands,” are “stripped of status and authority . . .
and further leveled to a homogeneous social state through discipline and ordeal.”
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The initiands are immersed in a new, separate social setting, and an effort is made
to undermine normal perceptions and routines.
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 The separation phase is followed
by a period of time during which the initiand remains at the margin of normal
society, marked off in some way; Van Gennep refers to this as a “liminal” state.
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Finally, there is a period of “reaggregation” during which, now reformulated as a
person with a new social identity and status, the initiate reenters the “normal” social
world.
In the first-year law school classroom, just as in the gross anatomy laboratory,
students experience their first, often jarring confrontation with the worldview and
practices of a new profession. To the degree that the first year of law school in-
volves a breaking down of standard cultural assumptions and inculcation of new
orientations, analysis of this process can reveal a crucial focal point of professional
identity—one that differentiates members of this profession from members of
others, and one that gives some sense of unity to otherwise diverse professional
experiences. As we shall see, a key aspect of this focal point in legal education is
precisely language itself, and a crucial rupturing occurs around expectations re-
garding language use. If students entering the medical profession must endure a
breaking down of everyday beliefs about the body, physicality, and death, students
entering the legal profession undergo a linguistic rupture, a change in how they
view and use language. This transition is, of course, itself signaled and performed
through language, the language of the law school classroom. As in other forms of
language socialization, new conceptions of morality and personhood are subtly
intertwined with this shift to new uses of language.
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