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Political Idiots and Ignorant Clients: Vernacular Legal Language in Thirteenth-Century Iberian Culture
- Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2013
- pp. 86-112
- 10.1353/dph.2013.0002
- Article
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In this article, the author explores the idea that during the thirteenth century there were implemented new vernacular legal languages that were communicated to the ignorant clients of the law or lay people by notarial officers. The article theorizes around the effects of this communication, understood as a process of second language acquisition in which the second language is the formulaic system contained in legal documents.