Greetings

[Mihaela Popescu]

Dear list members,

Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I am a PhD student at the
University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication. I
have just started the program, but my long-standing interest has
been - and will continue to be - legal argumentation, especially in
what concerns cases of institutional discrimination. I am currently
doing research in environmental justice rhetorics, with a focus on
the ways in which discriminated minorities construct discoursively
their identity and use it (not exactly successfully, as it turns out) to
argue their case. Right now I am involved in developing a coding
schema of the arguments that do not belong to the legal
'vocabulary' proper - such as moral references to the public good.

I have just started doing research in the field of CDA, and I consider
this list a great opportunity to learn. However, as legal
argumentation doesn't seem to be among the top priorities in
communication studies, at least in the States, I am especially
interested in learning of scholars doing similar research, and I
would be grateful for any suggestions for bibliography, useful
concepts etc.

I am looking forward to an interesting exchange of ideas.

Best regards,

Mihaela Popescu
Graduate student
The Anneberg School of Communication
3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
tel.: (1-215) 868 4352
fax: (1-215) 898 2024