Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

49 

 

BORDER CROSSINGS: USE OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES 

ACROSS SUBJECT DISCIPLINES 
 

Maya Khemlani David 
Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, 

University of Malaya, Malaysia 

Email: mayadavid@yahoo.com 

 

Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus 
Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia 

E-mail: nuha.azman@gmail.com 

 

Syed Abdul Manan 
Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Malaysia 

E-mail: samanan1998@gmail.com 

 

APA Citation: David, M. K., Firdaus, A. N. F. A., & Manan, S. A. (2019). Border crossings: Use of 

linguistic studies across subject disciplines. Indonesian EFL Journal, 5(2), 49-60. 

doi: 10.25134/ieflj.v5i2.1902. 

Received: 01-03-2019 Accepted: 11-05-2019 Published: 01-07-2019 
 

Abstract: Cross-disciplinary research, involving scholars of multiple disciplines, has attracted much attention 

from universities recently. This type of study extends beyond simple collaboration in integrating data, 

methodologies, perspectives and concepts and engages with real world problems, especially as global 

complexities have undermined the underlying ideology of countability and singularity of various disciplines 

founded on antiquated notions of territorialization. Since most disciplines are transferred through language 

and linguistics sciences like socio-linguistics, applied-linguistics and psycho-linguistics, an interrogation of 

received discourses on language study has direct and indirect impact on almost all the other disciplines and 

can be used to enhance language related studies in different ways. This paper shall define cross-disciplinary 

research and provide an overview of how applied linguistics and professional studies interrelate, focusing on 

the fact that research across disciplines must yield output that advances and benefits society, while allowing 

for complex and nuanced assessments allowed by the porous borders of different disciplines. This paper 

shares the kind of cross-disciplinary research which marries linguistics, languages and communication with 

other disciplines (for example, studies based on socio-linguistics and health, law, business or industry) to 

show how knowledge achieved from such research can result in trans-disciplinary recombination and 

expertise in other professional domains. 

Keywords: applied linguistics; cross-disciplinary research; language; linguistics. 

 

INTRODUCTION 
Cross-disciplinary research that involves 

scholars of multiple disciplines attracted 

much attention of scholars from academia. 

This paper aims to show the cross-

disciplinary expansion and growth of 

linguistics to a number of other disciplines in 

a wide range of contexts. This will be done 

by showing the critical role linguists play 

across health sciences, law, business and 

numerous social sciences. The main thrust of 

the paper revolves around argument that 

linguistics has the potential to cross-over, and 

can extend its circumference from the 

traditionally known role of language-

teaching to more applied domains. It may 

involve critical sites, such as the clinic, the 

courtroom, the corporate business sector, the 

public spheres and professional spaces more 

generally, where we have something to offer, 

where we can apply our knowledge, and 

hopefully bring about a difference (Sarangi, 

2012). Thus, the scholarship that marries 

linguistics with other disciplines can produce 

new knowledge that can result in trans-

disciplinary recombination and expertise in 

other professional domains. This approach 

deploys inter-relational research that “seeks 



Maya Khemlani David, Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus, & Syed Abdul Manan 

Border crossings: Use of linguistic studies across subject disciplines 

50 

 

to describe, interpret and explain the 

institutional and interactional orders of ‘what 

it is that is going on’ in crucial 

communicative sites and at critical moments 

in those sites, makes necessary the inter-

relational harnessing of a range of 

perspectives beyond those traditionally 

associated with linguistic or semiotic 

analysis” (Sarangi & Candlin, 2010, p. 2-3).  
What is linguistics crossing-over? 
While charting the expansion of applied 

linguistics, Sarangi (2012, p. 2) proposes 

that: 
I would like to suggest that Applied 

Linguistics is much more than language 

education in the classroom setting or 

language acquisition in natural settings. 

We can extend the circumference of 

Applied Linguistics to the clinic, the 

courtroom, the corporate business sector, 

the public spheres and professional spaces 

more generally, where we have something 

to offer, where we can apply our 

knowledge and hopefully bring about a 

difference.  
Sarangi and Candlin (2010, p. 2) further 

suggest that scholars engaged in cross-

disciplinary ventures would promote “active 

engagement in sites from a variety of other 

professional domains, such as Law, 

Healthcare, Counseling, Journalism and 

Media, Business and Management, and 

alliances with cognate disciplines.” The 

central commitment to the principles and 

practices of research within the paradigms of 

applied linguistics and professional studies is 

‘inter-relationality’ which aims at developing 

“inter-disciplinary and inter-professional 

collaboration, integrating methodological 

diversity, and a commitment to exploring 

connectivities among the values, procedures 

and knowledge bases of those with whom we 

seek to collaborate in achieving purposeful 

action.”  
Linguistics and health sciences 
This part reviews literature on previous work 

of cross-disciplinary nature with the merger 

of linguistics and healthcare issues in 

hospitals to highlight the potential for such 

work in Malaysia. Collins, Peters and Watt 

(2011) delineate on the nature of work that 

intersects linguistics and health and medical 

communication. It primarily hinges on 

doctor-patient relationship. This relationship 

is crucial in several ways: “the relationship 

between the patient and the doctor provides 

the foundations for establishing trust, rapport 

and understanding, explaining diagnoses, 

discussing prognoses, and negotiating 

treatment. The ways the doctor and patient 

use language to convey their perspectives 

determine how the patient’s problem is 

understood, as well as shaping the 

relationship which can have a therapeutic 

value in its own right” (p. 96). Apart from 

this, linguists can engage in such research 

using semiotic, paralinguistic, sociolinguistic 

and psycholinguistic analysis of patients, 

doctors, social behaviors or cultural norms 

that are interrelate linguistics and health 

sciences. 
This section in particular discusses three 

major studies exemplifying the marriage and 

cross-over between linguistics and health 

sciences that include “Language and 

HIV/AIDS” (Higgins & Norton, 2010), 

“Alzheimer Talk, Text and Context: 

Enhancing Communication” (Davis, 2008), 

and Bodies and Language: Health, Ailments, 

Disabilities (Ramanathan, 2009).  
Bodies and language: Health, ailments, 

disabilities 
In her publication titled “Bodies and 

Language: Health, Ailments, Disabilities”, 

Ramanathan (2010) deploys an applied 

sociolinguistic approach towards the 

linguistic dimensions of the body with focus 

on health, aliments, and disabilities. She 

specifically touches upon metaprescriptive 

utterances of cancer, breasts, and gazes. In 

addition, she also analyzes autobiographical 

writings of Alzheimer patients and 

caregivers. She further proceeds to study 

from poststructuralist viewpoints the 

discourses about the chronic diseases, such 

Diabetes, Epilepsy, and Body Breakdowns. 

The author also addresses the communication 

challenges faced by patients of autism and 

partial hearing. She further critically dwells 

on text and meaning-making in ailment and 



Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

51 

 

disability related research. Finally, she sums 

up critical ailment research in applied 

sociolinguistics from power, perception, and 

social change perspective. Following is a 

detailed description of her take on each of the 

above subjects. 

The themes related to cancer diseases 

takes up key metaprescriptive utterances 

around breast cancer. It addresses 

chemotherapy, amputation and prosthesis to 

argue that these terms ignore the lived, 

material, corporeal realities around bodies 

and the spillage that cancer involves. 

Drawing on feminist and other philosophical 

perspectives, the research offers alternate 

critical interpretations of these terms that 

permit us to begin rethinking our collective 

ideas about ‘disability’ and ‘normalcy’ while 

also raising concerns relating to medical 

gazes, (male) fetishism about breasts and 

societal notions about ‘abject’ bodies. It also 

addresses ways in which breast cancer 

patients and their partners struggle with 

issues around ‘altered’ bodies (e.g. whether 

to go in for reconstructive surgery or not, 

what a body with only one or no breast might 

be like, the extent to which their choices are 

governed by societal discourses about 

‘normal’ attractive bodies). 
For instance, Ramanathan analyses the 

linguistic and etymological aspects of the 

word ‘camotheraphy’. She observes that 

there are a number of issues that the 

metaprescriptive term of ‘chemotherapy’ 

draws a veil over and the radiating ripples 

around this term/event stay hidden. However, 

beyond this grim, difficult spillage are the 

linguistic and etymological aspects of the 

term itself. The word ‘chemotherapy’ is a 

combination of ‘chemo’ and ‘therapy’, with 

the former being derived from ‘chemo’ 

meaning ‘chemicals’ but specifically in this 

instance chemicals that have ‘a toxic effect’ 

and the latter from therape meaning 

‘treatment’ or ‘cure’. The juxtaposition of 

seeming opposites—a toxic compound that 

kills (chemo) with a treatment that cures 

(therapy)– is reminiscent of Derrida’s 

pharmakon wherein the remedy and the 

poison are part of each other; the term means 

both poison and cure. In the case of 

‘chemotherapy’—a real drug administered to 

cancer patients—this opposition, or, as it 

turns out, non-opposition, is lived out: the 

‘therapy’ patients actually received makes 

them ill (as Susan points out in her narrative), 

and when administered to non-cancer 

patients (as in the case of curing hepatitis C), 

chemotherapy actually causes cancer. I stress 

these issues around etymology and 

morphology here to highlight the rift or gap 

between these terms that otherwise goes 

unnoticed. Chemotherapy has become a 

metaprescriptive utterance with particular 

associations and specific conceptual 

apparatus that begs to be texted and infused 

with new associations and meanings. 
Moving towards the supposedly 

‘cognitive’ realm of memories and 

Alzheimer’s disease, next part of her research 

presents an examination of diaries kept by 

Alzheimer patients and their partners. It 

discovers ways in which diary writing 

becomes instantaneously an agentive way by 

which a sense of ‘self’ gets scripted—a point 

underscored in the second language learning 

by Norton (2000) and by Shenk (2005), 

Davis (2005b) and Pope and Ripich (2005) in 

Alzheimer-related work in the applied 

linguistics. Since memory is fast slipping 

away, while also pointing to the fluid nature 

of identities as patients struggle with 

diminishing language and remembering 

skills. Specifically, the chapter explores how 

two themes – repetition and (sure) signs, and 

traces and intentions – crucially inform their 

need to text their elusive hold on language 

and memories into place, making us take 

note of how in contexts of disabilities and 

chronic ailments texting, and to some extent, 

fixing, a sense of self may be a critical way 

of surviving and coping and stalling last 

shadows. It directly addresses the 

experiences of Alzheimer patients and their 

partners as they struggle with memory loss.  
Next, Ramanathan addresses experiences 

around body breakdowns, especially in 

relation to two chronic, invisible ailments, 

namely type-1 diabetes and epilepsy. It 

contends that biomedical discourses, from 



Maya Khemlani David, Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus, & Syed Abdul Manan 

Border crossings: Use of linguistic studies across subject disciplines 

52 

 

which societal discourses draw their strength, 

have emphasized malfunctioning body parts, 

and have made little room for humanistic 

articulations of bodily breakdown. Similarly, 

some strains of poststructuralist discourses 

on bodies in their propensity to emphasize 

the performative aspects of bodies and to see 

experience as constantly under erasure make 

little room for bodily breakdowns. It calls for 

the need for applied linguistics in general and 

aging-related work in particular to create 

interstitial spaces that avoid both the 

dehumanizing rhetoric of bio-medical 

discourses and the erasure of experiences as 

per some strains of poststructuralist thought. 

It also addresses some tensions relating to the 

fixing of experiences–how the recording of 

them runs risks of sedimentizing them–and 

of exploring ways of rendering them fluid. 
Another part of research addresses issues 

relating to intentions—how and whether we 

are ever able to fully communicate what we 

‘intend’ through language—and ways in 

which autism and deafness/partial hearing 

obscure our understandings of this term and 

its usage. Premised on Lacanian, Bakhtinian 

and Vygotskian thought, the analysis 

partially addresses parents’ accounts of 

initiating autistic and partially hearing 

children into ‘normal’ worlds. Particularly, it 

addresses ways in which so much of 

everyday communication depends on our 

individual readings of other people’s 

intentions and how this space of ‘what we 

intend’ is far gloomier and immature than we 

realize. 
Next piece of her research reports one of 

authors’ previous long-term, ethnographic 

endeavors involving extended work with the 

memories and life histories of patients 

suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. 

Collected over the span of three and a half 

years, this body of research is devoted to 

speech. Alzheimer’s discourse from a 

Derridean perspective raises critical issues 

relating to our developing perceptions and 

knowledge-making practices. It also raises 

quasi-philosophical questions about the 

nature of ‘texts’, ‘originals’ and ‘presences’, 

‘truths’ and the importance of seeking ways 

to render our texting about disability issues 

more fluid, since neither ‘disabled’ person or 

researcher or our interpretations of data stay 

stable and in place. 
Language and HIV/AIDS 
Higgins and Norton (2010) in their edited 

volume “Language and HIV/AIDS” focus on 

intersection between language and 

HIV/AIDS. The volume is devoted to 

exploring a host of issues around HIV/AIDS 

in various geographic and virtual domains 

(Uganda, Tanzania, India, Australia, 

Andaman Islands, online contexts and visual 

arts) and through different analytic modes 

(discourse analysis, first-person accounts and 

ethnographic data). This volume probes 

questions around sex, sexuality and their 

anxious speeches. It does so principally to 

draw our attention to how experiences of 

HIV affect subjectivities, including the 

formation of and resistance to cultural norms. 

A significant point here is not just how death 

and grief loom large around this condition, 

but how issues of discrimination and 

suffering are coded in local cultural norms 

around patriarchy, and how AIDS patients 

and their caregivers move both themselves 

and discourses about their condition to more 

uplifting domains. It is this bunch of issues 

that this volume invokes. It is dived into 

thematic sections which comprise of the 

following major topics: 1) Constructions of 

Knowledge about HIV/AIDS, 2) Gendered 

Practices in the Spread of HIV/AIDS, 3) The 

Place of Local Knowledge in HIV/AIDS 

Educational Practices, and 4) Institutional 

Responses to HIV/AIDS. 
This volume focuses on the role of 

language, discourse and semiotics in the 

construction of knowledge in HIV/AIDS 

education in different regions of the world, 

within the broader framework of applied 

linguistics and public health. The 

contributions examine the production, 

location and utilization of local knowledge in 

educational settings vis-à-vis discourses that 

are transmitted through official channels, 

such as medical and health professionals, 

non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 

and international agencies. Defining 



Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

53 

 

HIV/AIDS education broadly, the volume 

examines the construction of HIV/AIDS 

education as a discourse within educational 

contexts that shapes knowledge about the 

disease, and the emergence of competing and 

cross-cultural ideologies that are co-

constructed in educational settings. The 

central goal of the volume is to provide a 

collection of studies that yields helpful 

insights into the discursive construction of 

knowledge about HIV/AIDS, while 

demonstrating how the tools of applied 

linguistics can be exercised to reveal a deeper 

understanding of the production and 

dissemination of this knowledge. 
The contributors believe that they seek to 

democratize the construction of knowledge 

about HIV/AIDS through sensitive, emic 

analyses that give priority to the voices of 

people, including youth, who are not 

typically sanctioned as producers of such 

knowledge. The chapters use a range of 

qualitative methodologies to critically 

explore the role of language and discourse in 

educational contexts in which various and 

sometimes competing forms of knowledge 

about HIV/AIDS are constructed. The 

authors draw on discourse analysis, 

ethnography and social semiotics to interpret 

meaning-making practices in HIV/AIDS 

education around the world, analyzing formal 

and informal educational practices in 

Australia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Hong 

Kong, India, South Africa, Tanzania, 

Thailand and Uganda. The contributors 

examine both the forms of knowledge that 

are present among communities affected by 

HIV/AIDS and the forms of knowledge 

conveyed by health experts that are meant to 

help prevent the spread of HIV. By exploring 

both sets of knowledge, the chapters explore 

how ‘professional’ discourses of sexual 

health and prevention interact with ‘lay’ 

discourses, and they highlight important 

practical concerns that result from the gaps 

between these two sets of knowledge. Many 

of the chapters demonstrate that target 

audiences do have an awareness of official 

knowledge about HIV/AIDS, but they also 

reveal the salience of local knowledge for 

these populations. 
The analyses offered seek to make sense 

of the challenges that educators, health 

practitioners and target populations face 

because of these co-present forms of 

knowledge, and to make recommendations 

for change. In this Introduction, we begin by 

locating the volume within a broad literature 

on language and public health, and then turn 

to a consideration of research on HIV/AIDS 

and applied linguistics, more specifically. 

Next, given researchers’ interest in the 

intersection between local and global 

discourses on HIV/AIDS, they turn to a 

consideration of the ways in which applied 

linguists have addressed local knowledge 

across diverse research sites, and the 

implications this research has for 

investigations of HIV/AIDS. We conclude 

the chapter with a discussion on the 

organizing principle of the volume and its 

overall structure, with chapter summaries. 
The chapters broadly conclude that local 

knowledge is always present, sometimes 

even in the form of authorized discourses 

about HIV/AIDS. However, most of the 

chapters demonstrate that local knowledge 

remains in competition with official 

discourses about HIV/AIDS in formal and 

informal domains of education, and most of 

the chapters reveal that local knowledge is 

largely obscured in favor of official 

discourses about HIV/AIDS. While a volume 

of this nature does not strive to make grand 

generalizations about the place of local 

knowledge in the prevention of HIV/AIDS, 

the contributors propose that understanding 

how knowledge is constructed among various 

populations can helpfully inform any effort 

to prevent the spread of HIV. The findings 

presented here do seem to have in common is 

that greater inclusion of unauthorized voices 

can lead to deeper understandings about why 

some educational practices have greater 

success than others do. The contributors hope 

that this bunch of articles will inspire those 

working in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention 

to listen carefully to these voices. 



Maya Khemlani David, Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus, & Syed Abdul Manan 

Border crossings: Use of linguistic studies across subject disciplines 

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Alzheimer talk, text and context: Enhancing 

communication 
Davis’s (2008) collection of articles entitled 

“Alzheimer Talk, Text and 

Context Enhancing Communication” argued 

that the AD speaker retains a number of 

communicative competencies which may or 

may not be identifiable in clinical studies, 

and that these competencies can be built 

upon in ways that benefit the persons with 

AD and their caregivers by supporting 

interventions to enhance communication. 

This collection augments clinical inventories 

of Alzheimer’s discourse with an emphasis 

on how caregivers and researchers can focus 

on communication enhancement and person-

centered care. Specialists from linguistics, 

speech and communications disorders, 

gerontology, nursing, and artificial 

intelligence analyze retained competencies 

for social and linguistic interaction by 

speakers with Alzheimer’s Disease, keyed to 

a corpus of naturally-occurring conversation, 

collected over several years. The contributors 

examine discourse boundaries and social 

relationships, gender-cued interaction and 

life-course analysis, online text by and about 

Alzheimer’s speech, ways Alzheimer’s 

speakers co-construct stories, in more than 

one language, with caregivers and 

conversation partners. They explore ways 

that might help Alzheimer’s speakers - and 

ourselves - communicate better by knowing 

more about some of the ways they can 

continue to display their communicative 

skills, and by designing innovative 

enhancements and interventions. The 

collection includes contributions from 

scholars in several fields, such as Applied 

linguistics, gerontology, geriatric nursing, 

computer science, communication studies 

and communications disorders. All share a 

common concern, if not always the same 

terminology: a concern with how people with 

Alzheimer’s Disease and their unimpaired 

conversation partners produce, interpret and 

understand language used in specific contexts 

and situations. Accordingly, the articles 

incorporate findings from multiple 

disciplines and draw on interrelated research 

areas, such as aphasia or dementia. 

Boyd Davis and Cynthia Bernstein focus 

on one specific speaker in the corpus to 

examine how the impaired speaker sustains 

relational goals in discourse when the ability 

to produce information is reduced. Their 

analysis of specific features in the 

conversational interaction is linked to two 

threads of research: that which shows the 

Alzheimer’s speaker increasing their use of 

pragmatic constructs as their language 

declines, and that which suggests rapport, 

relationships and positioning as crucial 

components of conversation with impaired 

speakers. Later, Davis uses a review of 

functions of some discourse markers retained 

in the talk of AD speakers in the corpus, to 

look at the use of so to preface statements 

and declarative questions. Given that 

caregivers, at least in agency or institutional 

settings, spend a good bit of effort asking 

questions of AD speakers, she suggests that 

corpora could expand our understanding of 

the kinds of usage that may be easier for AD 

speakers to handle and the variation they 

present. 

Ellen Bouchard Ryan, Hendrika 

Spykerman and Ann Anas review how people 

with dementia use reading and writing for a 

variety of personal satisfactions to argue that 

these activities are both possible and 

desirable. Their review expands empirical 

findings with reports of lived experience to 

demonstrate the creativity and courage 

displayed by persons with dementia, as they 

use writing to maintain their sense of self. 

Lisa Russell-Pinson and Linda Moore are 

concerned with the way Internet websites 

establish a context for discussing AD. 

Although patient education is a priority, the 

amount of web-based information, even good 

information, can be overwhelming to persons 

and family members who think they are 

going to have to deal with a particular 

disease or condition. Russell-Pinson and 

Moore’s review of how the flagship 

Alzheimer’s Association site uses 

interrogatives to guide readers through 

http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/browse/advancedsearchresults?authorEditor=Boyd%20H.%20Davis


Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

55 

 

complex information also offers implicit 

suggestions for writing to the lay reader. 
Formal linguistics and law 
Linguistics and law are deeply intertwined. 

The cross-disciplinary nature of linguistics 

and law make it a prolific site for researchers 

of both the fields to collaborate and share 

knowledge. Law is all about language—legal 

coding and encoding, explanation, 

interpretation, analysis, argument, and so 

on. Courtroom and the discourse of the trail 

provide one particularly important site to 

observe the way violence and pain enters 

language (Scarry, 1985). It is language in the 

end which remembers, it is language that 

bears tradition and it is through 

language…that we remember not simply the 

appearance of the past, but also its discourse. 

In discourse, we read language to recollect 

not simply what was said, but the context of 

what was said, a copious linguistic context 

(Goodrich, ‘Language of Law’). The 

implications if legal verdicts and their 

wording are profound in emotional and 

psychological terms. Robert (1986) in an 

essay ‘Violence and the Word’ writes that,  
Legal interpretations take place in a field 

of pain and death. This is true in several 

senses. Legal interpretive acts signal and 

occasion the imposition of violence upon 

others: a judge articulates her 

understanding of a text, and as a result, 

somebody loses his freedom, his property, 

his children and even his life. When 

interpreters have finished their work, they 

frequently leave behind victims whose 

lives have been torn apart by these 

organized, social practices of violence. 
Language and law—new applications of 

formal linguistics by Grewendorf and 

Rathert (2009) 

The aim of this book is to show how different 

formal linguistic disciplines can fruitfully 

contribute to legal issues. The book wants to 

show the many interfaces between linguistics 

and jurisprudence (Grewendorf, 2009). Law 

and linguistics are intertwined. According to 

Grewendorf and Rathert (2009), law always 

has a linguistic form; there would be no law 

without language. There would be no way to 

establish legal validity without language, as 

justice needs communication. In this respect, 

the laws of society and the laws of nature 

differ. The laws of nature are valid although 

their correct formulations are not known 

entirely; they would also be valid if nobody 

had ever tried to put them in formulas. The 

laws of society are different, they only come 

about via human communication; they 

depend on communication and do not exist as 

such. The laws of nature are truly universal 

and eternal whereas the laws of society are 

state-bound and prone to be changed. 

Imagine a society without any law or rules; 

sooner or later someone will feel disturbed 

by what someone else does and he will 

communicate this. Rules of living together 

will be negotiated and law comes into a 

previously lawless society. Law is mediated 

through language, partially through spoken 

language (e.g. at court) and partially through 

written language (e.g. written statutory 

regulations, ordinances). Litigation is a 

process that is oriented towards the text of 

the written law and that results in new texts, 

judgments. Language and law are intimately 

linked, and so are linguistics and 

jurisprudence. 
One of the major sections of the book 

focuses on the understanding of the law— 

the contribution of semantics and 

psycholinguistics. According to Grewendorf 

and Rathert (2009), the interpretation of law 

is as old as law itself. Jurists and laypersons 

always ask for the precise meaning of a 

certain piece of the law, they are engaged in 

a steady process of understanding the law. In 

linguistics, the discipline investigating 

‘meaning’ (of words or sentences or texts) is 

semantics; thus, it is to be expected that 

semantics can contribute to a correct 

understanding of the law. This part also 

investigates the alleged incomprehensibility 

of legal language. Many features are claimed 

to be responsible for this: embeddings, 

complex noun phrases, nominalizations, etc. 

It is the task of psycholinguistics to 

investigate these features. 

 



Maya Khemlani David, Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus, & Syed Abdul Manan 

Border crossings: Use of linguistic studies across subject disciplines 

56 

 

Law matters, syntax matters and semantics 

matters by Carl Vogel  
In this chapter, the author argues that the 

formal semanticist can usefully interact with 

legal experts during the process of 

formulating legal texts, and that the 

semanticist can provide relevant advice for 

interpretive purposes. Vogel addresses a 

huge set of examples from Irish 

constitutional and statutory issues. Judges 

often explicitly appeal to linguistic principles 

of interpretation in justifying legal opinions 

and decisions, yet they do so inconsistently. 

The linguistic topics Vogel highlighted as 

relevant for the interpretation of legal texts 

include the meaning relation between 

conjunction (and) and disjunction (or), 

readings of the plural (collective versus 

distributive readings), the interpretation of 

relative clauses, under specification and 

vagueness, aspectual ambiguity, and lexical 

semantics. Obviously, the lawyers 

responsible for the interpretation statute did 

not see the role of negation in De Morgan, 

they only saw that conjunction and 

disjunction enter an equivalence relation. 

Vogel also elucidates the merits and 

limitations of recent attempts in Ireland’s 

legislation to provide semantic interpretation 

6 Günther Grewendorf and Monika Rathert 

principles, among them the guidelines of the 

Law Reform Committee (2000) and the rules 

supplied by the Interpretation Act (2005). 
The paper Phonetic cues to speaker age: A 

longitudinal study by Angelika Braun and 

Sefan Friebis 
The study presented by Braun and Friebis 

focuses on the development of famous voices 

over time, the recordings of whom are 

readily available over a considerable time 

span. The voices of eight male German 

politicians were selected for the study. 

Recordings extending over a period of 20–30 

years were obtained from the archives of 

various German radio stations. The variables 

studied were speech rate, mean fundamental 

frequency, its standard deviation, voice onset 

time (VOT), and jitter and shimmer. The 

main results indicate that the speech rate 

clearly decreases with advancing age. The 

VOT measurements demonstrate a decrease 

with increasing age. Shimmer shows a 

statistically significant increase with age. 

With respect to the forensic setting, the 

results of the present study demonstrate that 

certain changes within the vocal apparatus as 

well as changes in speech timing can reliably 

be linked to the age of a given speaker. 
Interactional norms in the Australian police 

interrogation room by David Yoong 
In this study, Yoong (2010) examines the 

interaction that takes place in a police 

interrogation room that follows certain 

conventions which are not evident in other 

settings, like school or home domains. This 

study which uses data derived from the 

questioning the Australian police conducted 

with Dr. Mohamed Haneef — a terrorist 

accomplice suspect aimed to show how the 

norms of interaction in the Australian police 

interrogation room are established through 

protocols and codes of conduct. Another 

aspect of norms of interaction analyzed in 

this article was the way power relations are 

created and maintained by looking at 

recurring discourse markers like the use of 

address and referent terms, interruptions, 

topic switching and latching. By identifying 

these linguistic devices, the author is able to 

see the patterns of interaction conducted by 

the Australian police with persons of interest. 
Courtroom discourse: Expert witness 

testimony in a criminal case in Malaysia by 

Nooraini Ibrahim (2007) 
In another research conducted within the 

court, Noraini (2007) surveyed the Kuala 

Lumpur criminal courts to study the usage of 

language in the proceedings, especially the 

use of languages other than Bahasa Malaysia 

against the backdrop of the Language Act, 

which deemed that Bahasa Malaysia is the 

national language and the language of the 

court. 
Professional world Englishes: A case of 

legal report genre analysis by Maya 

Khemlani David & Neda Saeipoor (2014) 
This study by David and Saeipoor (2014) 

aimed to investigate the Malaysian English 

judgment reports on rape cases from a 

linguistic perspective. It also sought to 

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57 

 

identify court of appeal Judgment reports of 

rape cases as a Genre and to identifying the 

Genre moves conducted within this genre. 

Reports of Malaysian courts of appeal on 

rape cases were identified as a specific genre. 

The movements within the genres were 

identified by studying two controversial 

reports. A comparison with contexts in which 

English is used as a first language showed 

that the judgments might suffer from relying 

on pathos argumentation in one critical 

move. 

The study concluded that the moves and 

sub-moves were similar in the two cases, 

allowing to call the judgment reports of court 

of appeal for rape cases in Malaysia “a 

Genre” which law professionals and their 

audience use and understand. The rhetorical 

arguments were used only in the move 

named “Arguing the Case”. The analysis of 

the reports showed the tendency of the judges 

towards “pathos” backed up with “Ethos” 

emphasizing on the emotional aspects to 

raise the audience’s sympathy to approve the 

judgment. The judges also emphasized their 

authority to justify the sentence. “Logos” on 

the other hand is used only in 2 or 3 sections 

in each report. The Rhetorical argument 

pattern in the “Arguing the Case” move may 

help professionals to avoid the risk of the 

effect of personal and emotional view of the 

judges on the justice system which can cost 

the system the trust of its audience.  

Linguistics and Anthropological Sciences 
Ageing in Africa: Sociolinguistic and 

Anthropological Approaches by Makoni 

and Stroeken (2002)  
This work covers the dramatic expansion of 

African Gerontology as a discipline focusing 

aging and its consequences for societies and 

for individual experiences all over the 

continent. Therefore, the edited volume 

brings together some of the most prolific and 

skillful researchers working on ageing in 

Africa. The book is grounded on 

sociolinguistic and anthropological research 

conducted in different regions of Southern 

Africa, West and East Africa, and in different 

types of communities, rural, urban and 

nomadic. Hence, the book is able to adopt a 

pan-African slant to issues about ageing. The 

data and their interpretation are characterized 

by the richness, typicity and authenticity of 

both narratives and ethnographical fieldwork. 

Because the authors aim to present insider 

views and experiences of ageing in Africa 

from these diverse contexts, the book is able 

to distil common and variable aspects of 

ageing in Africa. These permit a formulation 

of critical models of ageing which are 

sensitive to the elderly person’s experience 

and to the dynamics of the historical contexts 

in which are sensitive to the elderly person’s 

experience and to the dynamics of the 

historical contexts in which elderly persons 

have lived. Critical models of ageing appear 

to shed a new light on the social change that 

affects all of the contemporary African 

society (e.g. post-apartheid, post-

colonialism).  
The contributions to this volume 

demonstrate the acutely ambivalent position 

of elderliness in postcolonial society. Lying 

at the very heart of globalizing, monetarizing 

and nation-building pressures in African 

south of the Sahara, social relations between 

elders and youth have undergone radical 

changes in the last decades. In its richly 

detailed, multidisciplinary approach, the 

volume not only demonstrates how diverse 

the outcomes have been in different societies 

on the continent, but also poignantly elicits 

the current agility of ‘elderhood’ in offering 

contemporary strategies to cope with societal 

crises. This adeptly compiled work is an 

important contribution to the emerging field 

of African gerontology and should be of 

major interest to both scholars and policy 

makers concerned with Africa and its 

prospects. The volume vividly portrays the 

shifting roles and experiences of the elderly, 

both male and female, in Africa south of the 

Sahara. Stimulating and accessible reading 

for anyone interested in the spectrum of 

specificities and continuities of the elderly in 

the increasingly divided or wounded local 

worlds of entangled modernities. 

 

 

 



Maya Khemlani David, Aliyyah Nuha Faiqah Azman Firdaus, & Syed Abdul Manan 

Border crossings: Use of linguistic studies across subject disciplines 

58 

 

Linguistics and Business 
Englishes in advertising by Azirah Hashim 
Hashim (2010) summarizes international 

research into the topic and then illustrates her 

chapter with examples of print and radio 

advertisements used in Malaysia. She 

discusses how certain languages are used to 

advertise certain products and how a mix of 

languages is also often used to attract the 

attention of listeners and readers. Hashim 

illustrated and discussed the respective roles 

of standard and local Englishes as well as 

other languages in advertisements from 

different parts of the world and especially in 

Malaysia, and how they are used to appeal to 

a wide range of ethnic, national, and regional 

audiences. In bilingual and multilingual 

populations, the choice of language or variety 

can be a complex issue. Innovations in the 

form of code switching and choice of 

language for different functions indicate that 

the choice of language plays a crucial role in 

the advertising industry. The illustrations 

show that a mixture of two or more 

languages is commonly used in 

advertisements, as advertisers try to reach out 

to potential clients using both global and 

local strategies. In the illustrated Malaysian 

advertisements, the use of standard and local 

varieties of English, alongside one or more of 

the ‘local’ languages, such as Malay, Chinese 

or Tamil, can be found. The study of English 

in advertisements shows that English can be 

said to be embedded inside complex 

language habitats that determine its form, 

functions and status vis-à-vis other 

languages. 
  
CONCLUSION  
This paper demonstrates the cross-

disciplinary character of linguistics and the 

potential role it plays in various disciplines, 

such as health sciences, law, business, and 

numerous other sciences. The data showed 

that language and law are inextricably linked 

in several ways—rules are framed, encoded 

and interpreted in language. Similarly, 

legislations are coded in words; so are judge’ 

opinions expressed in words. How the 

judgments are framed, interpreted and 

articulated offer rich data for linguistic 

analysis as illustrated in the rape cases in 

Malaysia courts. 

In addition, the study is an attempt to 

situate the potential for a cross-disciplinary 

approach between linguistics and other 

disciplines in Malaysia where several studies 

across disciplines have already set the tone. 

Some observations can be made in the 

context on the kind of research that has so far 

surfaced. Research across linguistics or 

applied linguistics, as we observe, is mainly 

undertaken with a uni-dimensional purpose 

of contributing towards the body of 

knowledge within the same disciplines. 

Drawing on theoretical framework and the 

actual realities in Malaysian context within 

the academia, particularly linguistics, we 

emphasize that applied linguists can make 

more dynamic and vigorous contribution by 

crossing over to other disciplines and 

domains as highlighted. The crossing over 

makes potential promises for broadening 

both the applied and pure dimensions of the 

disciplines, and can constructively result in 

the services for society. As Sarangi and 

Candlin (2010, p. 2) propose applied 

linguists can embark upon “active 

engagement in sites from a variety of other 

professional domains, such as Law, 

Healthcare, Counseling, Journalism and 

Media, Business and Management, and 

alliances with cognate disciplines.” Besides, 

by establishing platforms for ‘inter-

relationality’ between applied linguistics and 

professional studies, the Malaysian 

researchers can help develop what Sarangi 

and Candlin envision as “inter-disciplinary 

and inter-professional collaboration, 

integrating methodological diversity, and a 

commitment to exploring connectivities 

among the values, procedures and knowledge 

bases of those with whom we seek to 

collaborate in achieving purposeful action.” 
  
REFERENCES  
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p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

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Davis, B. H. (2008). Alzheimer talk, text and context : 

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Higgins, C., & Norton, B. (2010). Language and 

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