From making to promoting law: An investigation into the evolution of 'Food Safety' discourse in EU Summaries

This study investigates the institutional-legal discourse of the European Union on food safety. The Summaries of European legislation are investigated as a form of popularisation stepping from the specialised genre of Directives. In particular, this study develops according to the following steps: providing a contextual framework to the analysis of the Summaries of EU legislation with a view to defining the language of popularisation vs. specialised language; analysing the main features of the EU summary as a genre; exploring the value(s) of modal auxiliaries in the Summaries investigated, specifically shall, in association with forms of citation. The main research questions concern a) the function and value of the modal shall in the citations migrating from the Directives to the Summaries and the consequences of this discursive choice; b) the forms of citation used in the Summaries and modals typically associated with specialised legal discourse, whether they are in line with the function and nature of the Summaries as outlined on the Summaries of EU legislation??? website. The purpose is to investigate the role of power and control on the part of the EU in addressing a non-specialist audience on such a spiny area as food safety.