Legal English

Characteristics of Legal English…

 English – a global language

 Varies according to different situations;
sometimes: stiff and conservative,
sometimes innovative and creative
 Difference between the spoken
language of court sessions and written
legal language
 Influence of other languages
 Legal English – a language of
interaction between Old English
(Anglo-Saxon, with Scandinavian
elements), Medieval Latin, Old French
 Latin and French expressions – part of
the most basic vocabulary of English
law.
 Legal English
 Legal English Is in common with Religious English as
it shares with religion a respect for ritual land
tradition. When English eventually became the
official language of the law in Britain (17th century),
a vast amount of earlier vocabulary had already
become fixed in legal usage.
 The reliance on Latin phrasing: mens rea вина
 French borrowings: lien – was supplemented by
ceremonial phrasing (signed, sealed, and delivered),
conventional terminology (alibi, negotiate
instrument), and other features which have been
handed down to form present-day legal language.
How many subvarieties of legal
English can you think of?
 Legal documents: contracts, deeds, insurance
policies, wills, many kinds of regulations
 Works of legal reference, with their complex
apparatus of footnotes and indexing
 Case law: language made up of spoken and
written decisions which judges make about
indvidual cases
Small set of grammatical and
lexical features
– Modal verbs (must, shall, will) distinguish
between obligation and discretion.
– Pronouns (all, whoever) and generic nouns
(hyperonyms e.g. vehicle person) help to foster
a law’s general applicability
– Certainty can be promoted by explicitly listing
specific items (hyponyms)
 Lexical features
a) Archaisms (the adverb: hereinafter,
verb: darraign, noun: surrejoinder, and
adjective: aforesaid)
b) Technical terms(Tort, patent, share,
royalty)
c) Foreign words (goods, guilt, steal,
swear, legal, quit, subscribe, court,
damage, default)
d) Synonymy(Assign – transfer; Default
– failure, Contract – agreement)
e) Repetition of words
 Syntactic features:

 a) Sentence length
 b) Nominalization (to give
consideration instead of to consider, to
be in opposition rather than to
oppose…)
 c) Impersonal style