OVERVIEW

This chapter focuses on certain aspects and areas of the language of the law: the importance of legal contexts and settings (for example, the courtroom); forensic linguistics; the different kinds of legal texts, including statutes and witness evidence in the courtroom; some typical features of legal language (such as repetition, vagueness and precision); the formulation of legal concepts and culture-bound legal concepts.

LAW AND LANGUAGE

The law is a professional area where the use of language is paramount for, as Mellinkoff pointed out in his seminal work on the language of the law, the law is ‘a profession of words’ (1963: vii). Moreover the influence of the law, like that of other professional areas such as medicine and education, both of which are dealt with here, is socially all-pervasive. Tiersma, for example, emphasises how ‘The law and its language affect the daily lives of virtually everyone in our society’ (1999: 1). While for Gibbons, ‘Law is language. It is not solely language, since it is a social institution manifested also in non-linguistic ways, but it is a profoundly linguistic institution. Laws are coded in language, and the processes of the law are mediated through language’ (1999: 156).

However, the language of the law is often considered a highly conservative and traditional domain, one which can sometimes be impenetrable to those from outside the professional community or without the relevant genre knowledge (see, for example, Solan 1993, Gibbons 1994, 2003, Tiersma 1999, Shuy 2006, Gotti 2011, Heffer et al. 2013). Indeed for Tiersma there is no doubt that ‘legal language is decidedly peculiar and often hard to understand, especially from the perspective of the lay public’ (1999: 2), but he also notes how the use of the typical features of legal language (which might seem archaic, complex and strange to non-lawyers) serves to create and solidify group cohesion within the profession: ‘when lawyers use these linguistic features, they subtly communicate to each other that they are members of the same club or fraternity’ (1999: 3).

LAWYER STEREOTYPES

The impenetrability of the language of the law has been widely presented, and caricatured in the works of writers such as Charles Dickens, as well as in the ongoing stereotype of lawyers.