Legal English Difficulties and Ways to Overcome
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31548/philolog2021.04.003Abstract
Abstract. This article is devoted to the study of legal English and its main characteristics. Legal language is the language used by legal professionals in their professional activity. That fact that historically legal English developed separately from the plain English made it difficult for understanding by laypeople. People find the traditional legal writing in such documents as jury instructions, security disclosures, credit card agreements, apartment leases, cell phone contract, promissory note etc. Even native English speakers often complain that they cannot fully understand the documents written to give them information.
The understanding of legal English has been a problem for centuries. It was the cause why the plain English movement arose in the 1970s. The purpose of the movement was to simplify the legal writing, make it simple and clear for average people.
This problem arises not only for those people whose native language is English. Nonnative speakers also struggle with the complexity of English legal writing. Ukrainian legal professionals that engaged in the area of international, business or corporate law, have to draft documents in English. Sometimes that could be a real problem because unlike English and American legal schools, the majority of ours don't provide the separate course of English legal writing.
The purpose of this article is to give practical advice to Ukrainian lawyers and interpreters, how, taking into account the peculiarities of legal English discourse, to draft documents in clear, simple and understandable way.
Results of research. A lot of English and American scientists, lawyers as well as linguists, devoted their studies to the plain English movement. Analysis of their works shows that four major factors had influenced on the development of legal English: historical, sociological, political and jurisprudential. Owing to them legal English is full of words of foreign origin, archaisms, argots and terms of art. These factors also caused the frequent usage of formal words, common usage of common words with uncommon meaning, deliberate ambiguity in legal writing. The studies of legal writing by lawyers have focused basically on vocabulary. Linguists in their researchers have identified some other features: overly complex sentences, passives, nominalizations, multiple negations, archaisms and jargon, inappropriate document design.
Described ways of simplifying legal English are quite easy to use. Taking into account tips mentioned in the article, legal professionals will be able to draft documents that will be clear and understandable for general public.
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