Legal Language And Plain Language Movement

It is undoubted that law has been playing and continues to play a vital role in the society of human beings. Law affects every aspect of people's life around the world. Its significance is reflected in that people all behave in a regulated manner, since law tells them what rights they are entitled to and what obligations they must abide by, what kind of remedy they have right to pursue if their rights are breached and what kind of legal consequence they have to face if they fail to comply with law.However, there is seemingly always a great impassible gap between law and ordinary people, because law or its embodied form, statute, is always written in a language and style far beyond the comprehensibility of ordinary people. While the true intention of law makers is to entitle people with legitimate rights to resort to law when they find their rights and interests are breached, statutes written with bad language use actually scare ordinary people away. Therefore, law must be clear and easily understood as much as possible, so that ordinary people with no legal education can take it as a weapon to protect their own interests and benefits.This thesis is aimed to reveal the significance of using plain legal language in the law making process and make such initial suggestions as how to improve readability of statutes by using plain legal language. The research method of this thesis is to have a review of the traditional common opinions held towards to the way of language use in the process of legislation and introduce the present global trend towards plain language and the plain language movement. By criticizing the traditional opinions and supporting the present trend, the author finally tries to suggest and summarize the best way to draft law, help persuade lawyers, legislators and governments that legal information could and should be written in a way that ordinary people can understand, and therefore safeguard the rights and interests of the public to the largest extent.This thesis will be divided into five chapters. The first chapter will be a general introduction of the whole thesis, including the significance and the organization of this thesis. The second chapter will mainly have a brief review of the historical development of"legal English"and make a conclusion of the features of legal English. In the third chapter, legalese is to be criticized and the concept of"plain language"and the"plain language movement"which is to simplify the complicated"legal language"will be introduced. In addition, four reasons of why use plain legal language is so important is suggested by the author. The fourth chapter will put forward the techniques of using plain legal language so as to make a piece of statute much more easily understood and accessible to ordinary people. And the last chapter is a brief summary of the whole thesis, the significance of this study, especially the practical value of this study and the limitations of this thesis for further research to improve.