Acceso usuarios
Patricia Brugnoli
The aim of this article is to shed light the heated debate involving the law language in which both law professionals and linguists take part. The core issue of this debate is that there is a strong need, felt both by some members of the law profession and by some linguists, to reform this language which is considered obsolete and obscure for the vast public. However, there is also another current of opinion which does not share this view and feels the law language should stay as it is since it is a means that satisfies a purpose, that of a specialised language. Therefore in order to tell whether critics regarding this language have good grounds or not, in this article linguistic comments are made taking into account several linguistic issues. The first issue deals with the fact that, although the law language is a special language which is mainly used by for the law profession, its main problem lies in the fact that it is a public language, which also addresses all citizens. The second issue is that, despite the that the law language is not technically a jargon, some accusation of being jargon proves to be true because this language is intentionally used by some professionals as a status symbol, a prestigious language used to safeguard socio-economic privileges. Therefore the article analyses the main problems of understanding for the general public posed by the law terminology.
The third issue dealt with by this article is whether the current state of the art of the law language is really satisfying for the law professionals or whether it sometimes puzzles even the professionals. This article also exemplifies the linguistic features that could be improved to better fulfil the professional needs. The fourth issue highlighted is that although the law is indissolubly tied to language, there is no or little linguistic awareness in law professionals. This is due to the fact that at university there are no courses where typical linguistic features (at semantic, morfosintactical, and stilistic level) are taught. However, some steps have been taken towards the reform of the law language in specific area of the law (for example some manuals in various countries have been written in order to simplify the public administration language). Moreover, in the realm of legal drafting, principals of semiotics and linguistics have been applied more extensively. The article ends by saying that although some improvements to the law language would be definitely useful, not only for the vast public but also for the professionals, the contrast between the two schools of thought as for the need to reform the law language is groundless since there is not an univocal solution to the matter. One has to consider the contents, the purpose and the emitter/receiver of the law language.
