Lawyers' Language

Download or read book Lawyers' Language written by Alfred Phillips and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interesting examination of law as language use or discourse, this study looks at the transformation of ordinary language into a special discourse for the purposes of the legal system. It is widely accepted that legal discourse is obscure, and often the public resent the fact that access to the law of the land is obstructed by the opaqueness of legal language. This book argues that the development and maintenance of law's special language can be justified. The myth that law can be written in either plain' or ordinary' language is exploded, and the linguistic obscurity of law is traced to its necessary complexity. The notion of representation is applied to the relation that exists between legal language and ordinary language.