MAHARASHTRA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, NAGPUR

B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) Year-I Semester-I: Academic Year: 2021-2022

First Open Book Assessment, October-2021

Course Code and Name: 1.5 Law and Language

Name of Student: Devraj Agrawal UID: UG21-08

Answer 1.

A number of frameworks are employed in genre analysis to analyse a variety of textual

genres produced, understood, and used by members of diverse disciplinary groups in
academic, professional, workplace, and other institutional contexts. The approaches vary
from close linguistic examinations of texts as products to inquiries into the dynamic
complexity of professional and workplace communities' discursive activities. Legal genre is
one of the type of genre, we can examine legal genres either synchronously or diachronically.
Synchronically, this entails examining a variety of elements, including the configuration of
the community of users of legal discourse at a given moment, the sorts of text they generate,
use, or anticipate to encounter, and normative constraints on what they do and think. Such an
examination is likely to include analysing the rhetorical organisation of texts as kinds, as well
as a contextual assessment (e.g., using ethnographic approaches) of user expectations and
values. The study of genre diachronically entails examining the historical evolution of genres
as well as the interaction of linguistic and institutional factors on the processes of change that
impact them. For law, the two types of research are inextricably linked; this is because the
process of historical evolution in law directly includes the past imprinting on subsequent
genre structure.
Contract is part of legal genre Contract language represents the language, wording and terms
used to describe the parties’ obligation in a contract. The words used to define contractual
obligations can define broad obligations or even restrictive obligations. The way you draft
your contract and the words you use in combination with one another will convey the legal
rights and obligations of the parties enforceable in a court of law. A contract is a legally
binding instrument granting the contracting parties some rights but also some obligations.
Depending on how a contract is worded, the obligation of a party may be affected as a
consequence. Some contracts can be very short and simple while others can be extensive and
highly complex. If your contract language is clear, the obligations stemming from the

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contract will be clear. If your contract language is ambiguous, then you may have a higher
chance of running into trouble due to potential interpretation issues. All business owners need
to sign a contract and deal with contract language on a regular basis. This makes it important
to know how contracts are drafted and the typical terms and conditions in them. A contract is
a legally binding and enforceable agreement between the contracting parties. The contract
language or the “terms and conditions” used to express the rights and obligations of the
parties can have a significant impact on their legal obligations, risk exposure and
potential success or failure of the contract. To start with, for a contract to be clear,
the language used must be clear. In other words, the author of the contract must ensure that
each contractual clause is drafted in simple and plain language so it can easily be understood.
For the contract lawyers out there, as a word of advice, it’s best to avoid using Latin terms
and phrases or legal jargon in your contracts so to ensure that the parties understand the
obligations they are committing to.
A contract will generally have some aspects that are general and common to many different
types of contracts also called “boilerplate language” while some other aspects will be
specific and related to the specific nature of your contract. For example, a sale of goods
contract will have specific terms and conditions with respect to the actual goods being sold
and will have some general terms and conditions as well.
Specific contract language- It relates to specific aspects of your contract depending on its
nature. For example, in a professional services contract, specific clauses will need to be
included to define the nature of the services, acceptance testing, the deliverables and so on. In
a software-as-a-service contract, the special provisions will include things like hosting
provision, data processing, use and access rights and so on. To have a complete contract, you
don’t need to have hundreds of pages of law wording, endless capitalized terms and
thousands of defined terms in contracts. You can have a defendable and complete contract of
merely a page or two. Granted, the more your contractual obligations are complex, the more
it is justified to have a longer contract.  If a business or a person does not pay attention to the
contract wording and language, it may end up with an unwanted surprise. Unfortunately, in
many instances, contracts are lengthy, verbose and with terms potentially conflicting or
leading to confusion. In that case, a contract can lead the contracting parties to misinterpret
their obligations leading to a contractual dispute. Contracts can be written in different ways
and have a different voice. You can write an essay, a novel, a book or a poem, you are using
English words but the tone is different, the message conveyed can be different and the
interpretation can be different Contracts are the same. Contracts will have their own tone if

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you are drafting a contract, a policy document, a declaration, an acknowledgment,
formulating a prohibition, detailing an obligation or other.
Answer 2
For any sought of legal document or oral communication events types of text plays a very
crucial role in the legal document or communication. The style of communication depends
upon the objective of communication, mood, tone, and ideology of the writers. For a speaker or
author, it is very important to know about these communicating styles for proper and effective
piece of writing.
Importance of style- To help lawyers understand why style matters, and why they cannot
ignore it even if they wanted to, we have found that it helps to turn—appropriately, given our
topic—to a metaphor. Style is sometimes thought of as “the icing on the cake.” This is an
unfortunate image, for it suggests that you could somehow scrape off the “style” and leave
the substance unaffected. Quite the contrary, properly understood, style is embedded in the
document, like the flavor of the cake itself. It is unavoidable, but it is nevertheless distinct
from—or, at least, distinguishable from—the nutritional substance as a result we require a
more appropriate metaphor. Our recommendation is as follows: Professional prose style is
like mountain air.
Take note of the connections:
First, mountain air is imperceptible; it is translucent, and you never see it. But everything you
see through it appears to be in more detail. It's like though when you reach the peak of a
mountain, your vision suddenly improves. Professional prose should contain the following
characteristics: Rather than drawing attention to itself with jokes, poetry, or fancy phrases, it
sharpens the reader's intellectual eyesight. Second, the mountain air is cold, pleasant, and
invigorating: the area has a "nature," a refreshing and energising atmosphere about it. You
genuinely look forward to waking up in the mountains and going through them.
For starters, mountain air is imperceptible; it is translucent, and you never see it. But
everything you see through it appears to be in more detail. It's like though when you reach the
peak of a mountain, your vision suddenly improves. Professional prose should contain the
following characteristics: Rather than drawing attention to itself with jokes, poetry, or fancy
phrases, it sharpens the reader's intellectual eyesight. We may deduce the two most essential
aims of a professional style from that metaphor. First, it should make the content more visible
and memorable, and it should keep the reader alert and interested regardless of how thick the
analysis is. Second, it should establish a credible, engaging persona with whom the reader

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would be happy to spend some time. Narrative, descriptive and argumentative are the three
types of text in which communication can be categorised.

 Narrative style -
The main purpose of this type of writing is to tell or narrate a story. The writer creates different
characters and tells you what happens to them. The writer uses first person narration. Narrative
writing is mostly personal, imaginative, and self-expressing. Narrative text is widely described as
narrative writing - a piece of writing that features a primary character in a setting who faces a
challenge or participates in an interesting, meaningful, or amusing activity or event. The narrative
is what happens to this key character. The plot is divided into three sections:beginning, middle,
and end. The main action occurs in the centre of the tale, which is the longest and most important
portion. The major event is the heart of the tale, and it involves either a problem to be addressed
or a significant life experience for the main character. Authors compose narrative stories in order
to amuse a larger audience - this is known as the author's purpose. In legal context narrative style
is used by the accuser to define the case, in the court room too when incidence being narrated by
eye witnessed. It is expected that whatever has happened it should be narrated exactly as it
occurred without any opinion though baised or mislead even can’t be judgemental. Thought it’s
written or oral communication in narrative text it should in first person narration, this text can
include metaphor, dialogue, imaginary language, figure of speech and etc. Novels, Short stories,
Poetry, Fairy, Tales, Autobiographies, Anecdotes, Screen scripts Play, Legends Songs are
some areas where narrative texts are used. Narrative text improve communication skills, in-
courage creative expression, helps in reviewing and remembering recently read material also it
proves to be essential for understanding .
 Descriptive style-
The main purpose of this type of writing is to describe. It focuses on describing a character, a
place, an event, an object or an action. There is a very slight difference between expository and
descriptive writing styles. The descriptive style is more detailed, personal and subjective. In this
type of text The writer makes the readers feel, hear, and visualize the situation the way he
wants also It describes places, people, events, situation, or locations in a highly – detailed
manner, figure of speech can also be used in this type of text. Description is mostly used in
novels, poetry, diary writing, plays, journal writing etc. below example is cited of the text-
A grand exhibition was held in the town. The first impression on entering the ground was of
walking in some fairyland. The vast space was decorated with so many colourful lights. The

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stalls, there, were like small shops and they had all the needful items. All types of amusements
could be seen there. The children were enjoying the ride on merry – go – round, the giant
wheel, railway train and other. The excitement and joy could be seen easily. In the given
example sample, the writer wants to describe his visit to the exhibition. It is a descriptive style
of writing.
Talking about legal communication the best place to find a legal description is usually
the most recent deed to the property (the deed that conveyed the property to the current
owner). The legal description is usually contained in the body of the deed. Descriptive
writing is very helpful in forensic sciences for making sketch of culprit without using
descriptive style this communication won’t be possible.
Argumentative style-
The main purpose of this type of writing is to convince. It contains the opinions, thoughts, and
biases of the author. The writer uses justifications, arguments, and reasons to make the readers
agree to his or her points. This is the style of communication mostly used by lawyer in court
room for presenting the argument from the side of parties. Here opinion are included, biased are
present to convince the audience in favour of your argument and for lawyer argumentative style
is used to convince judge. It ask reader to do something for the situation in argumentative texts
which include reason, argument and justification. This style of writing can be seen in speeches,
cover letter, editorial piece, letter of complaint, letter of editorial, newspaper opinion, critical
analysis, business idea, advertisement or commercials. Various people in the profession use
argumentative language for oral communication such as T.V reporter, anchor, newspaper
editorial writer, businessman, salesmen etc. These people give their opinion on particular event
or incidence. This can even have positive points but can be used in negative sense too.
Argumentative text can be useful for review writing of place, food, institution, product, book
and etc. which help viewer to make choice. In law school moot competition and debate
competition help students to develop their argument skills, as opinion should be fact and reason
based which should convince the reader or listener with your view through your strong argument
and valid evidence and if one be successful to convince people with your points that means you
have given justice to argumentative style of writing.

Answer 3.
The word legal discourse conjures up two concepts: language and discourse. Scholars have
sophisticated views about language and discourse, but few examine the distinctions between
the two. Legal discourse refers to the communicative actions employed in the practise of law.

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There are two kinds of legal discourse: linguistic and persuasive, Written communication, in
its broadest meaning, refers to communication that is more durable and valuable for reference
since the words are written down on paper and will not vanish upon delivery.
Simply said, legal discourse refers to the language employed in the legal area, i.e., the law.
The 'common-core meaning' of language is strengthened by Affiliation the legal sense, such
as the legislative, judicial, and law enforcement aspects. In legal language, the meaning is
defined by justice and fairness. This is because the primary role of the law is to govern
human conduct and maintain social order. Furthermore, the ideational meaning of the
legislation is added to language's common-core meaning.' The meaning of legal discourse is
also connected to the individuals who establish the laws, those who enforce the laws, those
who decipher the laws, and those who change the laws. People engage in these activities, thus
their language competence, professional level, values, views, attitude, viewpoint, aim, and so
on are represented in the legal discourse. On the other hand, linguistic legal discourse is of a
transient character. If no efforts are made to record or type down what is spoken, it may be
lost. Communication is critical in law because it bridges the gap between client and lawyer,
lawyer and lawyer, and judge and lawyer. As a result, some terms are often employed in legal
discourse. These terminology and phrases are labelled as relevant and unique to the legal
world's interpretation of them. Despite the fact that it takes the shape of linguistics, legal
discourse is not limited to linguistic means. Its primary foundation is legal theory, since it is
intended to assist legal actors in their day-to-day legal communication. While speaking legal
discourse play very important role little mistake or error change the meaning of sentence or
might be disrespecting. Place, time and person play crucial role for communication, tone of
our speech will be different with our friend and with judge of court. Informal language with
the judge may offend him. And same way place and time matters too hence while studying
legal discourse specifically linguistic basic place, person and time play crucial role.
Legal discourse, particularly persuasive legal discourse, gives birth to legislation couched in
legal jargon. The meaning of words used in the formulation of legislation might be either
common or specialised. The wording, structure, and general form of the drafted legislation
reflect legislative purpose, which prompts legal study. Written communication in law
contains considerable differences in grammar and word use, which are an expression of the
founders' desire to have a term or phrase interpreted in one manner for one field of law, but
understood in another for another. Understanding these subtleties is usually critical for
gaining an appropriate understanding of the texts. While considering Persuasive legal
discourse the text should be written following the guidelines of that legal text may it be

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contract, research paper, or any sought judgement, while writing a contract or any legal piece
if given instruction is not followed with proper language it might be considered invalid or
rejected for example. In any case memorial the name of defendant and accused party with
date, fact of case and evidence should be mentioned or else it will not be excepted in court of
law.
The oral kind of legal discourse primarily relates to the language employed in a lawyer's
speech or utterances during courtroom representation. Courtroom advocacy refers to the
arguments, motions, and objections that a lawyer may make throughout the course of
defending or prosecuting a client. There is a special legal language that has been defined and
legislated in order to ensure a quick and uniform understanding of what a lawyer wishes to
express. The two forms of legal discourse are interconnected and are frequently employed
concurrently. One follows logically after the other, but both emphasise the goal of avoiding
ambiguity and vagueness in legal practise.