Шабуніна В.В., к. юрид. н., асист., Інститут філології КНУ Тараса Шевченка LEGAL ENGLISH AS A PRODUCT OF ITS HISTORY У статті розглядаються важливі етапи у розвитку юридичної англійської мови з давніх часів і до сьогодення, а також численні лексичні та синтаксичні зміни, які відбулися. Ключові слова: юридична англійська мова, проста мова, лексичні особливості, латинська мова, англосаксонські характеристики, давньоанглійська мова. Рассматриваются важные этапы в развитии юридического английского языка с древних времен до настоящего времени, а также многочисленные лексические и синтаксические изменения, которые они внесли. Ключевые слова: юридический английский язык, простой язык, лексические особенности, латинский зык, англо-саксонские характеристики, древнеанглийский язык. Important milestones in legal English development from the ancient times up to the present as well as numerous lexical and syntactical changes they have made are examined. Key words: legal English, plain language, lexical feature, Latin, Anglo-Saxon characteristic, Old English.

Topicality of the research. The importance of studying legal English history is evident nowadays due to the modern tendency among representatives of legal profession to make the language of legal documents understandable for ordinary people. With the growth of the Plain Language movement in recent decades in all major English-speaking countries calls for radical changes in legal English have become increasingly widespread, and cases of enacted legislative texts following the principles of Plain Language can already be found in several countries, e.g. South Africa, Australia and Canada. Although the need of reform is clear enough, it is a rather difficult and complicated task, and a number of factors, first of all historical, must be considered. The subject of the research is legal English.

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The object of the research is historical development of legal English. Novelty of the research. Important milestones in legal English development from the Middle Ages up to the present are examined on the basis of original sources, which have not been the subject of previous research yet. Legal language is made up of several genres, each with its own specific characteristics. It ranges from the spoken exchanges in a court between lawyers and witnesses in a cross-examination, to the relatively standardised instructions given to jury members who are required to express a verdict in a court case, to the jargon employed by members of the legal profession in interpersonal communication, to the written language in case law, law reports and prescriptive legal texts. The latter may include anything from international treaties to municipal regulations, insurance policies, contracts of sale or wills. Some of the genres constituting legal language are more formal than others. For example, even if there are various formal restrictions in how spoken exchanges in the courtroom may be allowed to develop some of the actual language used, for example, by witnesses, may not differ radically from other genres of spoken discourse. On the other hand, certain types of written legal language may contain features that mark it as being so highly idiosyncratic as to be at times incomprehensible to anyone except legal experts. Some of the main characteristics of written legal English, such as sentence length and the complexity of its sentence structures, repetitiveness, the high concentration of Latinisms and archaic or rarely used lexical items have been widely held for centuries as having an exclusionary function, entrenching the privileges of the legal profession. Whenever native and non-native speakers "employ English in a restricted range of social and thematic areas" [Gramley 1992, 246], they use it in order to communicate (specialised) information straightforwardly. The main concern and the major difficulty of linguists who try to describe 'Special Englishes' is that of comparing them to 'General English' and to draw the attention to the differences between the two, which arise at all the levels of language. Lots of work has been done in this direction. Maurizio Gotti's book represents one of the latest attempts to shed light on this topic in a 427

comprehensive way [Gotti 2003]. In Gotti's work, as well as in traditional literature, distinctly different frequencies between specialised and general language in the use of lexicon and syntactic structure are constantly being pointed out as a central issue [Sager 1980; Robinson 1989; Scarpa 2001; Serianni 2003]. The language of lawyers may be so convoluted simply because of the conservatism of the profession and its veneration of history and tradition. To some extent, legal English is indeed a product of its history. It is a story of Anglo-Saxon mercenaries, Latin-speaking missionaries, Scandinavian raiders, and Norman invaders, all of whom left their mark not only on England, but on the language of its law. The English language can be said to have begun around 450 A.D., when boatloads of Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and Frisians arrived from the Continent. These Germanic invaders spoke closely related languages, which came to form what is called Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. Although the Anglo-Saxons seem to have had no distinct legal profession, they did develop a type of legal language, remnants of which have survived until today. Examples include words like bequeath, goods, guilt, manslaughter, murder, oath, right, sheriff, steal, swear, theft, thief, ward, witness and writ. Besides vocabulary, an Anglo-Saxon characteristic that left traces in legal English is alliteration. As opposed to rhyme, where the ends of words are phonetically the same, alliteration requires that words begin with the same sound. Anglo-Saxon poetry strove to have two or three words in each line alliterate. Alliteration is not only poetic, but makes phrases easier to remember, an important feature in a largely preliterate society. Most Anglo-Saxon alliterative phrases have disappeared from the language. One that has survived is to have and to hold, which is still part of many marriage vows. The phrase rest, residue and remainder, a ponderous but poetic expression, is still found in many wills, as is hold harmless in contracts. Other illustrations are any and all and each and every, both used by lawyers. The Anglo-Saxons used not only Old English as a legal language, but also Latin. Although Latin was introduced to England during the Roman occupation around the time of Christ, it became a major force only after the arrival of Christian missionaries in 597. Before long, Latin was the language of education and learning as well. The 428

association between literacy and the church became so strong that the two were almost synonymous. The terms clerk (someone who can write) and cleric or clergy (priest) derive from the same Latin term. For centuries, English courts recognised a type of immunity for the clergy. Latin was important for English law mainly as the language of court records. The practice of using Latin versus in case names (for "against") goes back to these times. English lawyers and judges were also prone to express sayings or maxims about the law in Latin. An example that has survived is caveat emptor. A later influence on the language of the law was Scandinavian in origin. During the eighth century, Vikings began raiding the English coast and eventually settled down. The English borrowed from these Scandinavians the most important legal word in the English language: the word law itself. Law derives from the Norse word for "lay" and thus means "that which is laid down." A couple of centuries later another group of Scandinavians had a far more profound and lasting impact on the language of English lawyers. These were the Normans, whose name ultimately comes from Northman. The Normans were originally Vikings who conquered the region of Normandy during the ninth and tenth centuries. In the course of a few generations, the Viking invaders of Normandy became French both culturally and linguistically; the Northmen had become Normans. William, Duke of Normandy, claimed the English throne and conquered England in 1066. Before long, the English-speaking ruling class was largely supplanted by one that spoke Norman French. Originally the Normans wrote legal documents in Latin, not French. Around 1275, however, statutes in French began to appear. By 1310 almost all acts of Parliament were in that language. A similar evolution took place with the idiom of the courts. At least by the reign of Edward I, towards the end of the thirteenth century, French had become the language of the royal courts. The use of French in the English legal system grew at the very time that its survival as a living language was in serious question. The English historian J.H. Baker observed that outside the legal sphere, Anglo-French was in steady decline after 1300. Even the royal household, the last bastion of French, switched to English by the early 1400s [Baker 2002]. Unhappiness about this state of affairs 429

led to what might be considered the first plain English law. In 1362 Parliament enacted the Statute of Pleading, which required that all the statutes and other legal documents should be drafted in English. However, the statute itself was in French. The legal profession seems to have largely ignored this statute. Acts of Parliament did finally switch to English around 1480, but legal treatises and reports of courts cases remained mostly in French throughout the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. Six hundred years after the Norman Conquest, and around three hundred years after French was virtually a dead letter in England, it was still being used as a professional language by English lawyers. Complaints continued to mount. Roughly a century later, the Puritans took power, beheaded the king, and passed a law in 1650 that required all case reports and books of law to be in the English Language only. The Puritans evidently had a zest not only for plain living, but also for plain language. But in 1660, after the monarchy had been restored, this "pretended act" was repealed and the old state of affairs returned. Lawyers rejoiced and resumed writing in Law French, at least for the next few decades. Due to the fact that it was the main language of the profession for so many centuries, French has had a tremendous influence on legal language. A vast amount of legal vocabulary is French in origin, including such basic words as appeal, attorney, bailiff, bar, claim, complaint, counsel, court, defendant, demurrer, evidence, indictment, judge, judgment, jury, justice, party, plaintiff, plea, plead, sentence, sue, suit, summon, verdict and voir dire. Another example of French influence is that in this language adjectives normally follow the noun that they modify. Several such combinations are still common in legal English, including attorney general, court martial, fee simple absolute, letters testamentary, malice aforethought, and solicitor general. Also, Law French allowed the creation of words ending in -ee to indicate the person who was the recipient or object of an action. Lawyers, even today, are coining new words on this pattern, including asylee, condemnee, detainee. The French of lawyers became increasingly corrupt, and its vocabulary more and more limited. By the seventeenth century lawyers were tossing in English words with abandon. Parliament 430

finally ended the use of Latin and French in legal proceedings in 1731. By then, however, it was delivering merely a coup de grâce. It is evident that the legal profession has tended to be quite conservative, especially in the past. But old habits and tradition cannot fully explain why modern lawyers persist in using archaic jargon passed down over the centuries. If legal documents are inscrutable, as many are, it is more than a matter of tradition. Some critics have suggested that the long retention of legalese is not just due to the profession's general conservatism, but comes from what might be called a "conspiracy of gobbledygook." As suggested by David Mellinkoff, who wrote a classic critique of the language of the law: "What better way of preserving a professional monopoly than by locking up your trade secrets in the safe of an unknown tongue?" [Mellinkoff 1963]. Mellinkoff's reference was to Law French, but he could just as well have been writing about legalese today. Jeremy Bentham was one of the more ardent proponents of the conspiracy theory. "After all", he wrote, "if you strip away all the jargon, every simpleton is ready to say: What is there in all that? This is just what I should have done myself" [Bentham 1970]. Concluding, it necessary to mention that there is a need of reform, but at the same time one should realize the complexity of many of the issues involved. While much of the criticism by Plain Language exponents of legal language is clearly justified in that much of it is objectively extremely hard for the average layperson to grasp, the reservations of many legal experts cannot simply be put down to a self-interested desire to prevent non-experts from understanding legal texts. Where it is feasibly possible, then, drafters should attempt to use expressions and a phraseology that can bring legal texts closer to ordinary citizens, but not at the expense of creating uncertainty or ambiguity, as this would ultimately be even more detrimental to those citizens in whose defence the text may have been written to start with. 1. Baker J.H. An Introducion to English Legal History / J. H. Baker // Fourth edition – Oxford University Press: USA, 2002. – 656 p. 2. Bentham J. An Introdiuction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation / J. Bentham // ed. J. H. Burns, H. L. A. Hart. – London: The Athlone Press, 1970. 3. Gotti M. Specialized Discourse. Linguistic Features and Changing 431

Conventions / M. Gotti –Bern: Peter Lang, 2002. – Pp. 351. 4. Gramley S.A Survey of Modern English / S. Gramley, K.-M. Pätzold. – London/New York: Routledge, 1992. 5. Mellinkoff D. Language of the Law / D. Mellinkoff. – Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963. 6. Robinson P.C. An overview of English for specific purposes / P.C. Robinson// ed. Coleman H. Working with Language: a Multidisciplinary Consideration of Language Use in Work Contexts – Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989. – Pp. 395-427. 7. Sager J.C. English Special Languages / J. C. Sager, D. Dungworth, P.F. McDonald – Wiesbaden: Brandstetter, 1980. 8. Scarpa F. La traduzione specializzta / Scarpa F. – Milano: Hoepli, 2001. 9. Serianni L. Italiani scritti / L. Serianni - Il Mulino: Bologna, 2003.

Шамшур М.А., асист., Інститут філології КНУ імені Тараса Шевченка ЕКСПЛІЦИТНЕ ВИРАЖЕННЯ КОНЦЕПТУ "КОХАННЯ" У ФРАЗЕОЛОГІЗМАХ КИТАЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ У статті аналізується специфіка експліцитного вираження концепту "кохання" у фразеологізмах китайської мови чен’юй, визначаються номени-вербалізатори даного концепту. Ключові слова: експліцитний, концепт, кохання, чен’юй, китайська, вербалізація В статье анализируется специфика эксплицитного выражения концепта "любовь" во фразеологизмах ченъюй, определены номенывербализаторы данного концепта. Ключевые слова: эксплицитный, концепт, любовь, ченъюй, китайский, вербализация This article analyzes peculiarities of explicit way of verbalization of concept of love in Chinese chengyu idioms, as well as determines the main lexical units, which verbalize given concept. Key words: explicit, concept, love, Chinese, verbalization

Актуальність даної статті полягає у її відповідності антропоцентричній парадигмі сучасної лінгвістичної науки, що спрямовує дослідження на вивчення процесів людської когніції в контексті міжкультурної комунікації. 432