Innovation in Language Learning

Traditionally a foreign language is taught as a subject that emphasizes only the language itself, and culture is taught as a different subject as if they were two different phenomena. Generally in Denmark, courses in professional languages or Languages for Specific Purpose (LSP) are being considered as purely professional and not  as  part of cultural studies. Culture as a concept is not linked with LSP, for instance Financial or Legal Language, even if the latter is probably the most culture-bound professional language there is. In their studies of comparative legal language, Spanish-Danish, language students are exposed to major challenges of different types. Generally, Danish students have poor knowledge of the Danish legal system and no knowledge of the Spanish legal system. In the Spanish Legal Language course, they  are introduced to various new universes, i.e. the legal universe and the use of Danish and Spanish legal languages. Furthermore, legal language is also cultural training in which the students achieve intercultural competences as culture is implicitly present in the legal terms, fixed expressions, metaphors, collocations, etc. in the shape of historical, societal and legal knowledge.In this paper I will discuss how courses in comparative legal languages have to explicitly reflect and incorporate cultural differences and intercultural competences. Furthermore, I will give a short description of the complexity of legal language and by means of some examples from the courses of Danish and Spanish legal languages, I will illustrate some fundamental problems when ‘translating’ culture-bound legal terms from one legal-linguaculture into another and finally suggest a different view on this LSP.