Legal English

Substantiate the statement “legal english is a sub-language.
The Oxford dictionary defines a sublanguage as, “A specialized language or jargon associated
with a specific group or context.”
Legal English is one of legal languages. It is the language of the law of England, America,
and some other countries whose official language is English. Language is the medium of
communication, and of course laws are expressed by language. To know the features and the
stylistic characteristics of Legal English is of great significance to learners of Legal English
including those who are fond of it, or workers of legal profession, such as lawyers, judges and
translators. And of course, knowing the stylistic features will help them learn much more
conveniently and efficiently. According to linguists, stylistics is not to list the kinds of styles,
but to observe and describe the language features of main styles, that is, the morphological,
lexical, syntactic, and textual features. Concerning the morpho-lexical features of legal
English we can say that the range of vocabulary is very wide. Large proportion f words are
highly formal. There are many archaic words, borrowed words, technical terms. Collocations
are those in which synonyms or near-synonyms are combined in binomials. The syntactic
features of legal English: adverbial elements are very often coordinated; legal English is
highly nominal; the insertion of pre-modifying elements is restrained; verbal groups used in
legal language are notable for the high proportion of non-finites. Long sentence, repetition of
lexical items, complete major sentences, complex sentences are another syntactic features that
can be met in a legal text. The textual features of legal English are: fewer patterns of spacing
(especially old legal English), fewer punctuation, clear logical sequence and initial
capitalisation.
Legal English is altering like any other register, but in this case calls for swift changes are
coming not only from citizens and consumers, but also from legal professionals. Renowned
lawyers have begun to understand that clients' needs are of utmost importance in the legal
profession, so they stressed the urge for language reform in an attempt to make this obscure
and complex language variety plain and easy to understand. In other words, they endeavoured
to clarify and simplify this register, so that ordinary people could be familiar with the rights
and obligations that affected them, as they were entitled to. “Plain English” movement was
born as a result. The movement aimed to simplify legal English, prevent it from being the
privilege of a small group of people who were either legal experts or legal professionals, and
at the same time enable average people to come to grips with the task of comprehending legal
texts, which occasionally seemed insurmountable. According to Mellinkoff -the initiator of
“Plain English” writing style, the language of the law is characterised by pomposity and
wordiness. But it should be understandable for each ordinary citizen. As a result of some
researches, Mellinkoff noticed that “Plain English movement” affected only specific
transactions regulating the rights and obligations of consumers, which should naturally be
stated plainly. It is not affecting statutes or certain branches of law, like the criminal code,
although there is a great need for it to be available for ordinary citizens.
We can distinguish two types of legal English: spoken or written media legal English and
legal texts. The spoken language varies, from the cross examination of a witness by an
attorney, over procedural instructions delivered by judges, to lawyers' interpersonal
communication. “Legal texts, on the other hand, consist of case law, law reports and
prescriptive legal texts. They comprise international treaties, constitutions, orders,
regulations, insurance policies, wills and contracts. Moreover, the spoken language of lawyers
is creative, especially when a lawyer addresses the jury, and written legal English is
conservative and formal”.
There are some general features specific for Written Legal English. The complexity of these
general features of written legal English gave rise to the demands for change. They are:
Lexical features:
“The changing perspective of legal English vocabulary comprises archaic, technical and
foreign words and phrases, as well as binomials. However, some of them are unnecessary. It
is argued that the choice of words plays an important part in the ultimate goal of carrying out
legal writing in Plain English. The avoidance of complex, technical, foreign, redundant, rare,
or jargon words and expressions is considered desirable”.
Some authors go beyond this division. For example, Garner considers several types of words
in legal prose: fancy words, vague words, euphemisms, timid phrases, empty dogmatisms,
and neologisms.
a) Archaisms:
“Archaic words are being used less frequently than other terms, so they became rather obscure
in the course of time. The examples include the adverb: hereinafter, verb: darraign, noun:
surrejoinder, and adjective: aforesaid.
Archaic terms belonging to formal style which are used by lawyers are called legalisms and
lawyerisms, such as: pursuant to (under, in accordance with), prior to (before), subsequent to
(after), vel non (or not, or the lack of it).
The native expressions beginning with: here and there (therein, hereunder, thereof, thereto)
are regarded as rare and obscure in everyday English. There are plenty of suggestions to delete
some of the given terms (hereby, hereunder) or replace them with more familiar forms
(hereinafter /below, herein /in this Agreement, hereinbefore/ above, hereto/ to this
Agreement), which are taking their hold. The same goes for prepositions: abutting/next to,
anterior to/before, prior to/before”.
b) Technical terms:
“Technical terms or terms of art are pure legal terms. Tort is a typical example. Some of them
are familiar to laypersons (patent, share, royalty), while others are generally only known to
lawyers (bailment, abatement). In the latter case the problem of miscomprehension of
legalisms emerged”.
Apart from pure legal terms, there are also common words with uncommon meanings, i.e.,
polysemous lexemes which have specific meaning within legal English, e.g., “attachment,
action, consideration, execute, party”. These are the words legal professionals use as technical
terms for their purposes in specific contexts. They are idiosyncratic because they have precise
definitions in the domain of legal science. However, a special attention must be paid when
legal meaning differs from the general meaning (consideration, construction, redemption,
tender), or when everyday words are used in apparently peculiar contexts (furnish, prefer,
hold). Nevertheless, terms of art are different from legal jargon. Words that are not precise
enough belong to the legal jargon, which is a specialised language that enables a professional
group to communicate quickly and efficiently. In this way internal communication of lawyers
is improved, but individual meanings of terms become obscure for non-lawyers, who face the
difficult task of deciphering them.
“Legal jargon has a number of specialized terms that lawyers invented to ease their
communication, varying from slang or near-slang (horse case) to almost technically precise
terms (res ipsa loquitur), but the legal jargon has not reached the level of professional,
technical terms. Other examples of the jargon are: boilerplate clause, corporate veil, bequest,
emoluments”

Legal English

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Substantiate the statement “legal english is a sub-language.

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