Harry Wood
Everyone, even me at one point until I started to study law, sees legal language as a type of writing that can be very hard to de-code to find its true meaning. There are many common words used in law as seen in this link http://www.celan.droit.univ-cezanne.fr/anglais/vocab/ , Someone who hasn't studied the basics of law will be stuck! For example would you know and understand the meaning of the term mens rea and actus reas? These are used every day in law to determine cases in a court room, so the importance of these words are huge and the ambiguous meaning to them could easily cause confusion.
But we all need to understand this language, because these complex words are involved in everyone's everyday life. How many contracts have you signed? Whether it is for your phone or your mortgage legal language appears frequently and if you cannot interpret it, how do you expect to know if the contract is secure and valid?
There can be so much that is piled into these contracts! Even though you probably don't read all the terms and conditions, I know I don't. They use precise technical terms that usually originate from Latin or French due to their in-depth meaning. They tend to structure these contracts with conjured phrases for example using words such as "or" and "and," however have you noticed how they tend to avoid using impersonal structures such as "I" or "you," they never want to directly address you, which doesn't surprise me! It probably gives them a sense of security that they haven't mentioned your name.
All these big corporate companies hire these top lawyers to try and exclude any loop holes in the contacts. Have you noticed the complexity of the sentences used, I don't think I've ever seen a simple sentence when proof reading the terms and conditions of a contract. The law is kept extremely formal and the fact that they deliberately use obscure words tells me that they are trying to confuse you.
This takes me on to why we actually need lawyers in the first place. Firstly without them how could we find any of these companies breaking the law with a less than fair contract, the fact that these lawyers can interpret the writing and actually make sure the contract is fair and precise to ensure that the general public just isn't being taken advantage of. But then I ask myself, do we actually need these lawyers? Because basically they are paid to draw up these un-interpretable contracts, only then to be paid to find a loop hole. So without these lawyers don't you think the contracts would be a lot easier and fair to understand?
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ - this is a link to the plain English campaign, which tries to give the view that we shouldn't use specialist jargon to confuse the general public. http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/lrsp/overview/legislation.php - here are some examples of legislations that are still in place today; you can see how confusing they actually get. It's impossible at times!
Everyone, even me at one point until I started to study law, sees legal language as a type of writing that can be very hard to de-code to find its true meaning. There are many common words used in law as seen in this link http://www.celan.droit.univ-cezanne.fr/anglais/vocab/ , Someone who hasn't studied the basics of law will be stuck! For example would you know and understand the meaning of the term mens rea and actus reas? These are used every day in law to determine cases in a court room, so the importance of these words are huge and the ambiguous meaning to them could easily cause confusion.
But we all need to understand this language, because these complex words are involved in everyone's everyday life. How many contracts have you signed? Whether it is for your phone or your mortgage legal language appears frequently and if you cannot interpret it, how do you expect to know if the contract is secure and valid?
There can be so much that is piled into these contracts! Even though you probably don't read all the terms and conditions, I know I don't. They use precise technical terms that usually originate from Latin or French due to their in-depth meaning. They tend to structure these contracts with conjured phrases for example using words such as "or" and "and," however have you noticed how they tend to avoid using impersonal structures such as "I" or "you," they never want to directly address you, which doesn't surprise me! It probably gives them a sense of security that they haven't mentioned your name.
All these big corporate companies hire these top lawyers to try and exclude any loop holes in the contacts. Have you noticed the complexity of the sentences used, I don't think I've ever seen a simple sentence when proof reading the terms and conditions of a contract. The law is kept extremely formal and the fact that they deliberately use obscure words tells me that they are trying to confuse you.
This takes me on to why we actually need lawyers in the first place. Firstly without them how could we find any of these companies breaking the law with a less than fair contract, the fact that these lawyers can interpret the writing and actually make sure the contract is fair and precise to ensure that the general public just isn't being taken advantage of. But then I ask myself, do we actually need these lawyers? Because basically they are paid to draw up these un-interpretable contracts, only then to be paid to find a loop hole. So without these lawyers don't you think the contracts would be a lot easier and fair to understand?
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ - this is a link to the plain English campaign, which tries to give the view that we shouldn't use specialist jargon to confuse the general public. http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/lrsp/overview/legislation.php - here are some examples of legislations that are still in place today; you can see how confusing they actually get. It's impossible at times!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.