Mikhaela Onofreychuk
Chernivtsi National University
THE ANALYSIS OF A LEGAL TEXT
In the formulation, interpretation and formulation of law, language plays an essential role. It is the medium,
the process and the product in all kinds of legal activities. An important task
in legal knowledge management, and indeed in almost any type of legal work, is
therefore the management of legal documents.
The interest of linguists in English legal discourse is relatively
recent and regretfully scarce as yet. Due to this central role of the legal
text , the aim of legislation system is to make the linguistic forms in the
text itself , first and foremost, explicit and precise and, secondarily,
flexible and condensed.
Although legal language has both a written as well as a spoken form, for
the purposes of this analysis two specific written forms were selected, namely
international contracts between European Union and Ukraine. Contents of
contract also have specific clauses, and they ensure division of contracts into
certain types in accordance with a side initiating a deal, a sphere of making a
deal, types of goods and their delivery terms. Very often a way of deliverance
is encoded with the help of special abbreviations. Contracts also possess
remarkable linguistic features revealed in their texts.
The analysis of a legal text presupposes its division into different
levels [3, с.15]:
1. Intra-discourse level.
a. Textual
level, that includes the formal study of the text and would account for
lexical and syntactic features;
b. Discourse
level, including the strategies to achieve cohesion and coherence in the
text.
2. Inter-discourse level,
linking the above features in the text to the rest of legislative texts.
As far as lexical
terms are concerned, the texts of contracts show the appearance of
typical features accounted for in other legislative texts, namely:
- technical terms or terms
of art, i.e., words specific to the genre, as for example salvage, unseaworthiness, inure, assured or
underwriter;
- common terms with an
uncommon meaning such as average (in the context of marine insurance meaning "partial
loss") or attachment (here, the enforcement of the policy);
- words of
Latin (operators, negligence, belligerence), French (default, damage, claim,
force, commencement) and Old
English (therein, hereunder, ) origin; doublets, like cost and expense, normally partial
synonyms, which are very usual in this register.
If we recall the syntactic characteristics of the
text, contracts are defined as frozen, perpetual
speech acts [3, с. 11] with an illocutionary force
which holds independently from an implicit addresser (the insurer) and an
addressee (the insured), who are subject to the terms or provisos- constitutive
rules- of the contract itself. The words are performative – no constitutive
rules, no contract – and are arranged
in an apparent regularity with invariable order.
There are differences concerning the formal
arrangement of the contract, as compared to other types of legislation. It has its own inherent organization, with
titles and numbered sections, coherent
with the discourse realm itself. International agreements of
a binding nature have a traditionally fixed invariant structure. They fall into
three parts: the preamble, the main part and the concluding part. The language
of international agreements is impersonal [4, c. 159]. The main functions of
these documents are directive and regulatory. They are aimed at imposing
obligations, conferring or restricting rights, freedoms, powers, etc.
From the
linguistic point of view, a contract is a type of a document, because any
agreement is a completed document fixing some information. As a type of text,
contract has its own specific characteristics. Stylistic peculiarities of all
document texts are: concreteness, conciseness, clearness of the stated idea;
high capacity of information; strict logic; clear rhythm of sentences;
accenting on the main idea with the help of word repetitions; absence of
connotational information; a special system of clichés and stamps; usage
of abbreviations, conventional symbols and marks; usage of terms in their
direct semantic meaning; preferential usage of monosemantic words; division of
a text into chapters, paragraphs, points, often numbered (clear compositional
structure of a document); usage of definite syntactic models; graphic
decoration of a document: quality of paper, quantity and quality of
illustrations, size and kind of print.
The main
features of the style of contract are: steady system of linguistic means in the
text of contract; lack of emotional colouring; decoding character of language;
usage of a special symbolic system; definite syntactic structure
In our research we have tried to cast a glance at the
overall characteristics of the Europenian Union contracts as a type of
legislative discourse or genre. In doing so, our objective has been to
highlight the importance that the peculiarities of the legal text – as the communicating
tool of a very specialised community – has differences that can be drawn
between this type of discourse – with an international projection in
large-scale business transactions today – and other kinds of written
legislation.
A detailed analysis of the texts of
international agreements makes it possible to draw the conclusion that
communicative purposes of these documents as well as requirements and
restrictions on their drafting are of crucial importance to the selection of
language means and the ways of their usage.
References:
1.
Михайленко В.В., Микитюк І.М. A Reader in Discourse =
Хрестоматія з дискурсу: навчальний посібник. – Чернівці: Рута, 2003. – 136 с.
2.
Зарума-Панських
О.Р. Лексико-семантичні особливості текстів міжнародних
договорів // Іноземна філологія. – 1999. – Вип. 111. – С.144-149.
3.
Maley, Y. The Language of the Law // Language
and the Law. – London:
Longman, 1994. – P. 11-25.
4.
Zaruma-Pans’kykh O.R. Some Syntactic Peculiarities of International Law
Documents // Language Teaching: Classrom, Lab and Beyond. 5th National
TESOL Ukraine Conference. - Vinnytsia, 2000. - P. 159.