Legal English Language Analysis

There is another explanation of why legalese looks, feels, and sounds different from other kinds of writing. That explanation has to do with the way language functions in specific contexts. Indeed, language functions only in specific contexts and never, in a vacuum. What is commonly referred to as "language" is the sum total of varieties of language in different contexts. These contexts can be social, regional, or linguistic. Linguists refer to the social and regional varieties of language as dialects, while contextually determined language is known as "register." Legal English is a distinct linguistic register, even as literary, technical, and philosophical applications of the English language are distinct registers; each has its own peculiarities of syntax and vocabulary. These linguistic features can be described precisely in each case and can be predicted, at least in prose writing. But to be "predictable" in this sense is not tantamount to being mediocre; it only refers to the stylistic characteristics of a variety of

The importance of language for man and society cannot be reduced. As a personal thing, language is not only a mode of communication between individuals but is also a way for the expression of their personality. Sociologically, language moulds the individual from infancy. The child comes to know most of the things of the world through language. Probably the early men had to undergo the same labour in learning the speech which a child has now to undergo in learning its mother-tongue, but with this difference that primitive man was a grown child who painfully elaborated a language for himself whereas the individual child has but to acquire and learn a language already