ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of legal language, perhaps the most obvious and traditionally debated intersection between language and law. It also introduces sociolinguistic concepts that help distinguish different kinds of linguistic variation. The phrase legal English is often used, for example, to mean competence in English for the legal workplace. The term variety, to continue with writing by D. Crystal by referring to his Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, signifies 'any system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by situational variables. Reflecting Crystal's point, legal language appears to involve a number of variables. There are professionals dealing with a field. Those professionals do so in certain settings of use, for specified purposes. Some maintain that 'legal language' is whatever lawyers say about law, whereas talk on the same subject by other people is 'talk about law' but not legal language.
