“What are Miranda Rights?”: The Case of Video FAQs on a Criminal Law Firm Website

The last two decades have been characterized by a continual reshaping and hybridization of textual genres, thanks especially to the central role of the Internet for communicating and spreading information (Garzone, 2007). That is why there is an evident and ever-increasing need to explore the different settings in which knowledge circulates. Therefore, the present chapter aims to identify the specific linguistic devices and semiotic means that distinguish a peculiar popularizing genre that is often embedded in law firm Websites, i.e., the video FAQs (frequently asked questions). These expert to non-expert short videoclips, in which lawyers answer set questions about crucial legal issues, are rather unique as the specialized and professional knowledge they disseminate primarily has a promotional function. In fact, legal facts in the videos are not just simplified but popularized, meaning that they undergo a discursive reconstruction of their specialized knowledge to reach the widest possible audience of non-experts (Calsamiglia & van Dijk, 2004). Specifically, this paper is a case study of the video FAQ section of the website of a big American law firm specializing in criminal law. For this purpose, a corpus of eighty video FAQs dealing with different topics in American criminal law was put together and analyzed. From a methodological point of view, both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to investigate and describe the language of video FAQs with particular attention paid to popularizing strategies. The multimodal dimension of legal knowledge dissemination through promotional video FAQs is addressed when describing this new popularizing genre and is referred to in relevant cases in the qualitative analysis.