Heather Adams y Víctor González Ruiz
In connection with the conference’s topics of linguistic injustice and language usage, this presentation explores the effects some complex traits of legal discourse may have on how lay citizens find legal texts easier or more difficult to understand. Our study is underpinned by two relevant factors: first, the law affects people’s lives in a wide range of ways and, second, any interaction with legal professionals or officials usually involves some degree of power asymmetry. In combination, both factors would mean that the use of abstruse, and sometimes unintelligible, language in the context of the law (as described by CMLJ 2011 or Montolío 2012 for Spanish, and by Mellinkoff 1963 or Wydick 2005 for English) could be considered an act of verbal aggression against the reader or listener. This supposition would also apply to many exchanges between governmental agencies and citizens.
In particular, in this presentation we will focus on two of the linguistic properties which have usually been linked to intricate discourse in legal Spanish: long, convoluted sentences and passive-voice verbs (as found by CMLJ 2011). In order to find out how each of these characteristics, respectively, affects the way in or the extent to which a person understands a legal text, we will carry out an experiment involving a usability testing method (e.g. Schriver 1989, Dumas & Redish 1999, Jarrett & Redish 2020). In it, a sample of adults with no legal training will assess (by way of a comprehension test) two rewrites of an excerpt from a real Spanish legal text featuring long, elaborate sentences and passive-voice structures. Each of the rewrites will give prominence to only one of the two traits mentioned while neutralising the other one. The findings will allow us to advance hypotheses about which linguistic habits should be avoided to achieve a more effective and less imbalanced communication in the legal field.
REFERENCES
– CMLJ (Comisión de Modernización del Lenguaje Jurídico). 2011. Informe de la Comisión de Modernización del Lenguaje Jurídico. Madrid: Ministerio de Justicia.
– Dumas, Joseph; Redish, Janice. 1999. A practical guide to usability testing. Exeter: Intellect.
– Jarrett, Caroline; Redish, Janice. 2020. “How to test the usability of documents.” <https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2020/05/how-to-test-the-usability-of-documents.php>.
– Mellinkoff, David. 1963. The language of the law. Boston/toronto: Little, Brown and Company.
– Montolío, Estrella. 2012. “La situación del discurso jurídico escrito español. Estado de la cuestión y algunas propuestas de mejora.” Hacia la modernización del discurso jurídico: contribuciones a la I Jornada sobre la modernización del discurso jurídico español, edited by Estrella Montolío. Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions Universitat de Barcelona. 65-91.
– Schriver, Karen. 1989. “Evaluating text quality: the continuum from text-focused to reader-focused methods.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 32(4). 238-255.
– Wydick, Richard C. 2005. Plain English for lawyers. 5th. ed. Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press.
Keywords: legal language, legal Spanish, clarity, usability testing, legal communication.