INTRODUCTION

Suggested topicsLegal languagesLegal terminologyLegal translationCharacteristics of legal discourseLegal linguistics and the search for clarityLanguage in the courtroomForensic linguisticsLanguage legislationLinguistic human rightsLanguage policy and planning: official languages,

minority languages

PreviewLanguages for specific purposes v. ordinary

languageLegal language v. other LSPs: history, target

audienceGenres of legal languageCharacteristics of legal languagesBeginnings of interest in legal languageRise of legal linguisticsRelevance of legal linguistics for linguistics and lawRelated branches of law/linguisticsPractical application

The Concept of Legal LanguageA functional variant of natural language, with

its own domain of use and particular linguistic norms (phraseology, vocabulary, hierarchy of terms and meanings)

Legal language as language for specific purposes (LSP)Legal language – based on ordinary languageLegal terms whose properties vary according

to the branches of lawCharacteristics that distinguish legal

language from ordinary written language (e.g. sentence structure)

Specific legal style

Legal language as a “technolect”A language used by a specialist profesion (lawyers)In the courts and in the government –

professionals who are not lawyers (jury members, lay judges, administrators)

Ordinary citizens (will)Target of messages transmitted in legal language:

whole population, certain layers of the population, or a number of particular citizens

Law requires compliance of all people; court judgment relates to the parties involved in the case

Legal language – not an instrument aimed solely at internal communication within the legal profession

Legal languageGoverns all areas of social lifeThrough intertextuality, can be combined

with language from any domainVery old, which is not the case with other

LSPsIt has shaped the ordinary language of

various countries in a significant way

Legal languageThe population may use another language

than that forming the basis of the legal language

Middle Ages: LatinToday: legal language of African countries –

English or French; local languages spoken in everyday communication

In Finland: legal language until 19th c. - Swedish

Genres of legal language

Genres of legal language: spoken/writtenLanguage of lawyers: legal authors,

legislators, judges, administrators, advocatesPrivate documents : contracts, willsInternational agreements

LegaleseStyle of legal language: a spectrum that extends

from the solemn cast of the Constitution to everyday legal texts

All professions develop their own jargon, which strenghtens internal relationships and coherence of the group

Part of legal jargon – common to all sub-groups of lawyers

Some expressions - only used by a single sub-group of lawyers, or even within a particular court or department (ministry, supreme court)

Counter-language of the Criminal Fraternity

The language of offenders – a counter-language of legal language, notably criminal law

The heart of this: prison slangFunctions: strenghtens relationships of groups

of prisoners in relation to prison officers and the justice system; a secret code, rapidly changing and largely unknown to prison officers; frequency of synonyms (in Finnish prison slang:70 expressions to describe a police officer, 30 to describe imprisonment)

Beginnings of interest in legal languageLaw – bound to languageIn some contexts, linguistic aspect of law

dominates:legal translation, legal lexicography, legal rhetoric, judicial interpretation

Legal translation: history1st legal translated text that has survived:

the peace treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites dating from 1271 BC, followed by innumerable translations

Corpus iuris civilis – first translated into Greek, than into many other languages

In medieval times, legal translation focused on Latin: texts were translated from different vernaculars into Latin and from Latin into various vernaculars

Legal lexicography: historyRoman law: creating a conceptual system which

requires clarifying connections between legal concepts

Defining terms expressing conceptsThis has led to compiling legal lexicons1st legal lexicon: Gaius Aelius Gallus, De

verborum quae ad jus pertinent significatione (‘On the meaning of words referring to the law’), 1st c. BC

Tradition of legal lexicography: carried on in Byzantium and in Western Europe

Legal lexicographyIn Western Europe – medieval legal

dictionaries first published in Latin, later in new national languages

1st bilingual lexicons of legal language – compiled in Byzantium (Latin-Greek lexicons)

Lexicons- partly encyclopaedic dictionaries, partly dictionaries of definitions

Legal lexicographyLater, an analogous need arose in Western

Europe as to links between Latin and new national languages

When Latin was replaced by modern languages, the need arose to compile legal dictionaries between various European national languages

RhetoricIn Ancient Greece, r. was closely connected

with activities of advocates before the courts1st treatise on rhetoric – written by Corax of

Syracuse in 5th c. B.C.; its focus: legal rhetoric

In the Middle Ages, rhetoric was one of the three subjects of the teaching trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric); an important place in the training of European lawyers

Legal linguistics todayModern linguistics developed at the

beginning of 20th c.Enormous progress of science and

technology in 20th c. gave birth to study LSP (Fachsprachen, lengues de spécialité both comparatively and in relation to ordinary language

Legal linguisticsLinguistique juridique, jurilinguistiqueRechtslinguistik (Recht und Sprache)Juryslingwistika (Polish)Pravovaia lingvistika (Russian)

Legal linguisticsResearch: synchronic (contemporary

language) or diachronic (historical)Canada: contrastive analysis of two legal

languages (English and French); closely bound up with the science of translation; this type of legal linguistics has spread to other countries, such as Poland

Legal linguisticsIn all schools undertaking research into legal

language, lawyers and linguists are to be foundResearchers: often dual training, or a study is

carried out in close cooperation between lawyers and linguists

Today researchers with linguistic training often use quantitative methods with the aid of computers; a typical research subject: occurrences of terms, or other linguistic elements (e.g. prefixes, suffixes) in legal texts

Legal linguisticsResearch topic: understandability and

readability of legal texts from the stand-point of non-lawyers

Legal linguisticsExamines the development, characteristics

and usage of legal languageStudies may concern vocabulary

(terminology), syntax (sentence structure), or semantics (meanings)

A synthesis between legal science and linguistics, notably applied linguistics

Also based on sociolinguistics

Legal linguisticsClosely connected to semanticsLexicology – a central position; it is through

terminology that legal language differs from ordinary language

Legal lexicography – compiling legal lexicons and dictionaries

Syntax: sentence length, frequency of subordinate clauses

Legal linguisticsMorphology: the construction of compound words

from the standpoint of their clarity Forensic linguistics - examines production and

perception of utterances from the legal standpoint, notably in courts: phonetic analysis of human voice (threatening phone calls), verifying the authenticity of documents

Research into legal style (application in rhetoric): how advocates convince judges of the worth of their messages

Legal linguisticsHistorical studies: how vocabulary has

changed over time; the countries and epochs of origin of borrowed legal words; how is legal language used in various legal sub-cultures (researchers, judges, advocates); to what extent is legal terminology known by the general public; how and when lawyers began to use modern languages instead of Latin and what is the current importance of Latin in today’s legal languages

Legal semiotics and legal symbolism

Spoken language is only one means of communication; animals transmit messages without language

Human beings also communicate in different ways

Semiotics examines all kinds of communication together

Legal semioticsResearch into the symbols of power and

judicial ritualsMessages that are not verbal, but express the

authority and prestige of judicial bodies: solemnity of court-houses, judges’ dress, positioning of judges and parties in the courtroom, rituals of legal procedure – wordless messages

Legal semioticsClosely related to legal linguistics: the tone of

the judge, the prosecutor, and the advocate, rhetorical pauses in their speech, the requirement that the public maintain absolute silence

Written presentations: the material, colour, decoration of documents

Legal semioticsLegal circles employ non-verbal signals that

transmit legal messagesHow effective is legal communication by non-

verbal means?E.g. drawings or charts annexed to a contract or

a lawBody language (e.g. traffic police hand signals),

visual signs (road signs, landmarks), sound signals (river traffic communications)

Symbols expressing authority: heraldry, flags, medals

Related disciplines: Legal informaticsExamines and teaches various forms of relationship

between the law and information and between law and informatics, as well as related problems of legal regulation and interpretation

Legal style, structure of laws, intertextual referencesSystematisation of legal textsStructure of legal texts, use of notes and appendices,

methods of emphasizing passages in the text and of showing links between different parts of the text (chapter and paragraph numbering, bold or italic script for headings and key words

Related disciplines: legal scienceSystematizes the legal order through legal

conceptsPrimary interest – conceptsLegal linguistics – terms are the primary

object of researchLegal science – meaning of legal terms

Links with other legal studiesLegal theory, legal informatics, legal sociology,

history of law – fundamwental importance from the standpoint of legal linguistics

In the development of legal language, history of language and history of law are fused; impossible to understand the circumstances in which legal language is used without knowing sociological dana

Comparative law - helps legal linguist to understand the interactive links between various languages used for legal purposes

Legal interpretationSemantic and syntactic arguments –

important partLinguistic methods, notably those of textual

linguistics, useful to legal scholars and practical lawyers in the task of interpreting

Legal linguisticsUses statistical methods that complete the

picture of legal language and of law obtained through other sources

Regularities in usage of legal language – of great interest from the theory and sociology of law

Foreign influences on national legal science can be brought into the open (citations in foreign languages – identifyinfg which foreign cultures have influenced national legal thinking, and, indirectly, the legal system of a country)

Comparative lawResearch in legal linguistics often focuses on

a single legal language; some major studies examine the development, structure and vocabulary of two or more languages; interaction of languages (how words pass from one legal language to another

Comparative law: methods for comparing legal cultures ; conclusions on the basis of differences and similarities found; the division of legal systems into major families and sub-families of law

Comparative lawSheds light on factors that influence the

development of the systems of concepts in the background of legal terms; better understanding of legal terminology

Legal translation and lexicography presuppose that the correspondence of concepts belonging to the legal systems in question would have been carefully analyzed; knowledge is required of the various institutes in these systems, notably of institutes of procedural law – the core of comparative law

Language policy1) Legal effects and rules on the use of

language2) the right of an individual or a group to be

taught in their own language, and of the public use of that language

Language policySome states aim to stifle use of languages other than

the one that dominates as the language of instruction and public life; the right of individuals or groups to use their own language – matter of regulation under public international law

The language regime of the EUSafeguarding the purity of the national language

under pressure of another languageThe right of citizens to require courts and authorities

to use a language that they clearly understandThe right to clear, comprehensible language

Linguistic riskWho bears the risk that a party to a contract

may misunderstand the content of the contract for linguistic reasons?

The rule in contract law according to which standard clauses vaguely formulated are interpreted to the disadvantage of their author (in dubio contra stipulatorem); in the case of standard contracts – the specialist who drew them bears the risk

Linguistic riskCases with international features, esp. those

involving immigrants – problems: contract is clear, but one party does not understand it

Allocation of linguistic risk – a topic of lively discussion in Germany in the case of employment contracts of immigrant workers

Importance of legal-linguistic knowledge: linguisticsLimits of variation of natural languages and

languages for special purposesPrinciples of language changeWays in which the language of judges and

officials influences the development of ordinary language

Application of legal linguisticsPractical lawyeringTranslationLexicography Terminology

Practical lawyeringLegal language – lawyer’s basic toolStudies of characteristics of legal language

can reveal shortcomings; improvementsComplex documents poorly drafted often

allow several interpretaionsIt is not enough for lawyers to be familiar

only with their language – knowledge of foreign languages for special purposes necessary for international cooperation

TranslationEurope increasingly needs translations of legal

textsEU translators use automated translation tools

and computer-aided methods of human translation

Automated translation and use of terminological databanks presuppose human control

Human control of automated translation – based on the culture and general knowledge of the translator; information on characteristics of legal language

Lexicography and terminological workLegal linguists study legal vocabulary and its

characteristics and pave the way for the practical work of compiling dictionaries and lexicons

Standpoint of terminologists – opposite to that of lexicographers: the point of departure for terminological work – concept, that for lexicographical work – term

Terminological study – based on careful analysis of systems of concepts; glossaries resulting from such studies- highly accurate

Lexicography and terminological workLegal terms – often multiple meanings

(polysemy); terminological studies – essential support for traditional lexicography: analysing terms corresponding to the systems of concepts – focus of interest; basis of legal dictionaries, completed by studies as to meanings appearing in the actual use of legal terms