Rigidity and fuzziness within the framework of English Statutes and Law Reports. Original French title: Rigidité et Fluidité dans les cadres Législatif et jurisprudentiel anglais
Authors: Wagner Anne 
Published: January 2008

The thesis uses a substantial corpus which spans a period of 100 years to
examine English legal discourse and the appropriateness of law as a specialized
language and as a linguistic medium. The analysis has three main
foci: (1) the analysis of the message content by means of refining the techniques
of semioticians and linguists, (2) the study of English history and its
influence on the language of English law and (3) the technical and specialized
contributions of jurists and judges (from the civil, the
administrative or the criminal register). Two layers within the discourse
are then distinguished in this study: rigidity and fluidity which show a permanency
and renewal.

A major concentration in the study is vocabulary relations. Legal words
have a peculiar tenacity – an ability to achieve stability within changing
social and economic conditions (Gény 1922) although the illusion is of
conservatism, rigidity and uniformity – because the social structure penetrates
into the architecture of legal language. That is why every past and
present society has its own knowledge of words, and many have created
new words or modified the meanings of existing words in order to reflect
their particular standards and expectations (Hobbes 1971), as shown
below for the word ‘night’:

Under the Night Poaching Act 1828, s.12, it is stated that “the night
shall be considered and is hereby declared to commence at the expiration
of the first hour of sunset, and to conclude at the beginning of
the last hour before sunrise”.
Under the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, s.1 “night means
the period between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.”.
Under the Highways Act 1980, s.329(1) it “means the time between half
an hour after sunset and half an hour before sunrise”.

Moreover, this web-like semantic organization – described by Eco (1976)
as a multi-levelled maze – demonstrates complexity which arises from the
specific activities of professionals (either judges, jurists or MPs) who
impose their definitions and contributions upon historical, economic and
social events showing, for example, a conflict with the contemporary
grammar:

In any Act, unless the contrary intention appears,
(a) words importing the masculine gender include the feminine;
(b) words importing the feminine gender include the masculine;
(c) words in the singular include the plural and words in the plural
include the singular.
(Interpretation Act 1978, s.6)

Therefore, it is highly important to show how lexical items, created or
modified by jurists, judges and MPs, slot into the common language and
how the factual references turn the semantic content into a technical language:
history, aspects of generalization (‘dis-individual’ in Delmas-Marty
1986: 25), judicial actors and formal systems have an influence over the
meanings of legal terms.

One more obvious and important point emerges; that text-organizing
vocabulary (Coltier and Turco 1988) functions on the surface of some specific
genre discourses (Kevelson 1988, 1991). Three genre discourses are
examined: prescriptive, descriptive and explanatory registers. Their
analysis demonstrates that the influence of judicial speech is, paradoxically,
a source of both rigidity and fuzziness.

Besides, this language of the law has developed in a social context,
meaning that it will gradually change according to the social and historical
circumstances of the country (Carbonnier 1978). Thus another genre
factor to be reckoned with is related to the difference between academic
science and popular science, i.e. professionals of the field and lay people.
Indeed words have their own legal tradition (history) or silent backgrounds
(specialized meanings) which can only be understood by a
professional of the field. Given this criterion, lay individuals are in a state
of perplexity because the language of the law has developed without
taking into account everybody’s personal background (‘a language of fool’
in Gridel 1994). And so, there is a clear division between non-practising
people and practitioners as shown below with the word complainant:

one who makes a complaint to the justices (Jowitt Dictionary)
In subsection (1) of this section “complainant” means a woman upon
whom, in a charge for a rape offence to which the trial in question
relates, it is alleged that rape was committed, attempted or proposed
(Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976, s.3)

Moreover, English law still interlocks with other European Union member
countries’ legal architectures and will affect their future evolution. So, the
last issue highlighted in this thesis – ‘LSP translation’ – considers that
words do not develop along the same path in all languages. Indeed, as languages
are influenced by the culture and the history they are part of (the
fuzzy part), LSP translators must find acceptable words in the other language
in order to produce an acceptable translation. As a result they must
avoid mismatches between the source-language (Legal English) and the
target language (Legal French). That is the reason why the primary task for
translation consists in exploring the common territory where legal English
terms and legal French words can work together and share the knowledge
that belong to both (the rigid part). The main aim of LSP translation will
then be to develop the ability of translators to perfectly comprehend both
English and French legal reasoning, the nature of the subject, and the
subject treated, so that translators may express themselves as justly as if
they wrote the original.

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