ABSTRACT
In all societies, law is formulated, interpreted and enforced: there are codes, courts and constables (Goody 1986: 132). And the greater part of these different legal processes is realised primarily through language. Language is medium, process and product in the various arenas of the law where legal texts, spoken or written, are generated in the service of regulating social behaviour. Particularly in literate cultures, once norms and proceedings are recorded, standardised and institutionalised, a special legal language develops, representing a predictable process and pattern of functional specialisation. In the Anglo-Saxon common law system, a discrete legal language has been apparent since post-Conquest England, which in many essentials has persisted to the present day. A description and explanation of the present-day forms and organisation of the language of English and English-derived law needs then to begin with a brief account of its origins.
