On the Incoherence of Legal Language to the General Public |
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Authors: | Sol Azuelos-Atias |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Hebrew Language, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel |
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Abstract: | I will suggest, in this article, a possible explanation of the fact that legal language appears incoherent to the general
public. I will present one legal text (an indictment), explaining why it appears incoherent to legal laypersons. I will argue
that the traits making this particular text appear incoherent are, first, that a specialized legal meaning is conveyed implicitly
and, second, that there are no key-words that could direct laypersons to the knowledge making this meaning obvious to legalists.
I will conclude that any legal text having these traits is likely to appear incoherent to the general public and suggest that
the traits making my example appear incoherent might be rather common among the various texts of the various legal systems.
On this suggestion there is no need to assume any causal relation between lawyers’ social interests and the apparent incoherence
of legal language as it entails that this incoherence is inevitable. (I will argue that it is a result of the facts that legal
language is ordinary language used, in the ordinary way, in the special context of the legal discourse.) |
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Keywords: | |
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