| The idea of plain English has been a commonplace for several decades, but its history as an important part of forensic linguistics is not long. The traditional forensic language (legalese) plays a negative character to hamper apprehensions and applications of law especially for the general public. The essential idea and function of plain English is to prevent law from swamping into the quagmire of incomprehensible words, and a large number of researchers devote themselves to make that goal.This paper has five chapters. Chapter One introduces the development of plain English by taking its history in Britain and America, the two major English-speaking countries, as an example. The concept of plain English is defined in Chapter Two to underlie a base for further research. Chapter Three discloses the misalignment between the ought-to-be and the reality of forensic language. The fruits of researches on forensic linguistics and cognitive linguistics are cited to show the unreasonability of traditional forensic language and why plain English is superior as a part of law-governance. Chapter Four summarizes the criticisms to plain English and refutes them from several angles, asserting that plain English is superior. Chapter Five is a guideline for transferring legalese into plain forensic English. |
