ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the linguistic properties of legal discourses and law-specific interpretation rules. Law discourse is full of jargon, including law-specific words like plaintiff, French and Latin words (voir dire, amicus curiae), and familiar English words with law-specific meanings like action. Syntactic-semantic rules and tendencies include using full noun phrases instead of pronouns for co-reference, use of said as a determiner and an adjective, and anaphoric use of here and there with suffixed prepositions, as well as lots of long, syntactically complex sentences, lots of passives (especially agentless ones), and uses of third person expressions in contexts where most non-law discourses would use first and second person pronouns. Linguistic “canons” of interpretation specific to law include noscitur a sociis (“It is known by its neighbors”), ejusdem generis (“Of the same kind”), Expressio unius est exclusio alterius (“Expression of one thing is exclusion of another”), and others. Despite these characteristics, the expression “the language of the law” is a misnomer. The overwhelming majority of sentences used in legal discourses are constructed and understood entirely according to the morphological, syntactic, and semantic rules of English. Legal jargon may create some unintelligibility to non-law folks, just as with any specialized field, without implying the existence of a different language.
