Developing Professional Cultural Competence through the Multi-layered Cultural Substrata of FASP: English for Legal Purposes and M. R. Hall’s The Coroner

In an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and ELP (English for Legal Purposes) perspective, this paper studies the construction of professional cultural competence through the cultural substrata woven into the narrative of specialised popular fiction, or FASP.After a brief overview of the theoretical framework retained and the functions of a coroner in England and Wales, the discussion focuses on a coronial FASP, M. R. Hall’s The Coroner (2009), to analyse three cultural strands which relate meaningfully to ELP learner objectives: culture specific to the Coroner’s Office, broader social commentary with regard to issues concerning the legal community as a whole and, finally, locus-related societal and national cultures.The paper concludes by addressing reservations expressed regarding such randomly acquired knowledge by highlighting the advantages of a heuristic and semasiological approach in exploring both target and source culture.