Lawyers and their 'gobbledygook!'

Do you ever watch a programme or hear something about the Law and not have a clue what they are talking about or not know what a certain term means?

Hopefully this will give you an understanding of where the legal language came from.

Well, we British used to talk like them and yet today's language is completely different.

Lawyers today, still use historical lexis which can be traced back to the time of the Anglo-Saxons!
It is said that the Anglo-Saxons enjoyed using alliteration in their legal language – yes the Anglo-Saxons had legal language but not so much a legal profession! This is a phrase I am sure we are all familiar with 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' well this phrase is from the Anglo-Saxon period. However we may still have some of their phrases but I am very glad we do not have their punishments of chopping off noses and hands! If you want to know more about the Anglo-Saxons themselves then follow this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Law

Combined with our British English we seemed to have borrowed words from Latin, which also still exist in our lexis today. Latin phrases such as 'Ejusdem Generis' which is a rule of language about OUR language yet is named in Latin and about how to understand our law. You would think that we would have a name that is English as it is a rule of ENGLISH LANGUAGE but of course this would be too simple and Judges still express the sayings such as 'Ejusdem Generis' to this day.
It doesn't stop there with British English; we have also borrowed words from the French! Most of these words are still used today in fact a lot of our legal language is from the French including words like 'court' 'defendant' 'claim' 'sentence' 'assault' which many of these words you can probably recognise.

However lawyers don't just stop at borrowing they also do our own mixing and matching of the different languages.  It could be a Latin or French word or phrase alongside an Anglo-Saxon word or phrase for example 'breaking and entering' and 'made and signed' so wouldn't this suggest that lawyers have almost made their own language through others. However in some ways this is good as from doing this through those types of languages they have been able to come up with words to represent some things such as palimony  (alimony paid to a "pal" or unmarried partner) - which this word has only come into terms through lawyers.

 So how is it words that have been in the British English dialect for so long are only used with a certain person, in a certain profession and we do not understand them? As with legal documents written by Lawyers a lot of people have trouble understanding the words used in the documents to describe certain things or even just a phrase which only describes a word.
We have developed our language in many ways through thinking up new words and phrase, borrowing or even starting to abbreviate a lot of our words  for example 'LOL' however with Lawyers they like to stick to their historical language, traditions and old habits seem to be part of the reason they still have this language today.
 

To learn more about Legal language follow this link http://www.languageandlaw.org/NATURE.HTM - I warn you its lengthy!

By Charnelle Jarrett