Legal Vocabulary

Mattila, Heikki E. S.

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199572120.013.0003

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The linguistic characteristics of written legal discourse reflect the complex and decontextualized nature of legislation: long sentences, complex sub-ordination of clauses within sentences, syntactic discontinuity, complex nominal structure, multi-nominal expressions, polysemy of legal terminology, minimal punctuation use [ 7 : ch. 5, 11 : 106, 14 , 22 , 32 ]. The linguistic complexity is a result of the need to ensure the legal scope and legislative intention are clearly expressed during the drafting process [ 12 ].…”

Section: Existing Research On Comprehensibility Of Legal Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Convoluted constructions and verbose text in this instance are unnecessarily complex and make the phrase less comprehensible for court users who are not familiar with relevant procedures. Despite the widely accepted notion that it is legal terminology that makes it difficult for lay people to engage with the justice system [ 32 ], procedural understanding plays an equally important role [ 52 , 56 ]. Ensuring procedures are coherently presented, for instance, by dividing them into cognitively logical steps presented chronologically (e.g.…”

Section: All-encompassing Nominalisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Journey to Comprehensibility: Court Forms as the First Barrier to Accessing Justice

2021

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The article explores the comprehensibility of court forms by providing a quantitative overview and a qualitative analysis of such syntactic characteristics as length and structure of sentences and noun phrases. The analysis is viewed in the broader context of genre characteristics of court forms, their role within legal proceedings, and their function for eliciting narratives from court users. The findings show that while the elicitation strategies are not always coherently aligned with the guidance sections, the guidance itself condenses legal and procedural information into overly complex and verbose syntactic constructions. Comprehensibility barriers are thus created through breaks in information flow, ambiguous syntactic constructions, missing information and misalignment between questions and guidance. Such comprehension challenges have a negative impact on the potential of court users to effectively engage with legal proceedings.

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Section: Existing Research On Comprehensibility Of Legal Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: All-encompassing Nominalisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Journey to Comprehensibility: Court Forms as the First Barrier to Accessing Justice

2021

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“…In legal linguistics, the reflection upon the relation between legal concepts and legal terms was initiated and developed in the writings by Heikki E.S. Mattila (2012b;. Mattila (2018: 130) defined the legal term as the linguistic expression of a legal concept.…”

Section: Legal Linguistics and Legal Logicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

Galdia

2021

Comparative Legilinguistics

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This essay is a survey of methods applied and topics scrutinized in legal-linguistic studies. It starts with the elucidation of the epistemic interest that led to the emergence and to the subsequent expansion of the mainstream legal-linguistic knowledge that we dispose of today. Thus, the essay focuses upon the development of problem awareness in the emerging legal-linguistic studies as well as upon the results of research that might be perceived as the state of the art in the mainstream legal linguistics. Meanwhile, some methodologically innovative tilts and twists that enrich and inspire contemporary legal linguistics are considered as well. Essentially, this essay traces the conceptual landscape in which the paradigms of legal-linguistic studies came about. This conceptual landscape extends from the research into the isolated words of law and the style used by jurists to the scrutiny of legal texts and legal discourses in all their socio-linguistic complexity. Within this broad frame of reference, many achievements in legal-linguistic studies are mentioned in order to sketch the consequences of processes in which legal-linguistic paradigms take shape. The author concludes upon a vision of legal linguistics called pragmatic legal linguistics as the newest stage in the intellectual enterprise that aims to pierce the language of the law and by so doing to understand law better.

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“…The language of law grows out of the ethnic language -it has taken over its phonetics, syntax, and general vocabulary (Mattila, 2012(Mattila, , 2006. Such a solution is conditioned by the social function of law -in order to be able to reach individual members of society, the law must be communicative, the legislature and commentators of law cannot use completely hermetic language.…”

Section: Esperanto As the Universal Language Of Law?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Concept and Functions of a Universal Language of Law in the ethnic language. Secondly, certain terms and expressions of the national language are given a special meaning by law -sometimes radically different from the meaning in the national language, sometimes broader or narrower than it (Matulewska, 2008, Mattila, 2012. Moreover, in the language of law, there are words that belong to the ethnic language, but the meaning they acquire in the law is precise and clear (Mellinkoff, 2004).…”

Section: Esperanto As the Universal Language Of Law?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Concept and Functions of a Universal Language of Law

Doliwa

2021

Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric

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The subject of the article is the concept of a universal language and a reflection on its importance for law. The starting point is a presentation of the history of the concept of a common language for all mankind, a concept that has always accompanied man – it is present in the Bible, in the ancient writings of Near Eastern peoples, it was alive in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, and it experienced its particular heyday – among other reasons because of the gradual abandonment of Latin as the language of science – in the seventeenth century, an age that was reformist by definition. Since its inception, the concept of a universal language has been inextricably linked with the idea of world peace and universal happiness for all people. It is significant that in most universal language designs, regardless of the era, there were, to a greater or lesser extent, references to the utility of such languages for law. The author, tracing the development of the concept of a universal language, focuses on its fullest contemporary development: Esperanto. Esperanto, like previous universal language designs, places particular emphasis on ideas linked to the concept of a universal language, especially the idea of peaceful coexistence and understanding between peoples. In this context, it is reasonable to ask what role Esperanto can play in the development of certain branches of law, especially international law. Given the position of English as the language of legal acts of international importance, the answer to this question is currently not clear.

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Legal Vocabulary

Cited by 18 publications

References 18 publications

The Journey to Comprehensibility: Court Forms as the First Barrier to Accessing Justice

The Journey to Comprehensibility: Court Forms as the First Barrier to Accessing Justice

Conceptual Origins of Legal Linguistics

The Concept and Functions of a Universal Language of Law

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