The Intersection of Law and Linguistics: An Analysis of Legal Language

The field of Legal Linguistics focuses on the interaction between legal and linguistically-related disciplines. It is noted that the relationship between language and law has attracted much interest in both social sciences and humanities. At the same time it is a complex field of inquiry. There is an immense amount of solid fact-based research in social sciences and humanities. Many scholars envy the lucidity and rigor of literary scholars and formal linguists (Gałuskina, 2015). Good lawyers are fine rhetoricians, but they are some of the worst pedants. Legal language has never been extensively studied for its own sake (J. & Mootz, 1995). Linguistics as an academic pursuit flourished in many European countries where France and Germany played a prominent role in its birth. Nevertheless, the local traditions produced distinct prisms through which Language and Law were perceived. It is argued that it has become imperative to seize this opportunity and comprise both perspectives; global one and local one. Without such ambitious enterprises many national traditions will remain provincial, hindered by linguistic, institutional, cultural, and contextual obstacles.