Objectiveness and detachment in legalese: is it justified to take them for granted? A corpus-driven profiling of the vocabulary of appraisal in legal English

Laburpena

The objective and impersonal nature of legal language has traditionally been emphasised by scholars (Alcaraz, 1994; Bathia, 1982; Cao, 2007; Mellinkoff, 1963; Tiersma, 1999), who consider that this English for Specific Purposes (ESP) variety displays authorial detachment on the lexical, syntactic and even discursive levels. Such detachment is often achieved at the expense of clarity and effectiveness as regards the communicative function of legal text, whose major aim, that of resulting precise and unambiguous, is often blurred by the convoluted and obscure character of its language.The expression of dissatisfaction on the part of laymen and even specialists in this respect can be traced back to the 16th century, when Edward VI, king of England, wished that“the superfluous and tedious statutes were (…) made more plain and short, to the intent that men might better understand them” (as cited in Bathia, 1982: 4). Several initiatives have been carried out to date to make legal language less obscure and more accessible such as the Plain English Campaign1, which aims at making public documents more accessible to the general public. Impersonality has thus been envisaged as a common feature to all legal genres which manifests itself through different linguistic mechanisms. One of the most widespread options to accomplish this function is the use of agent less passive forms, participle clauses, or cleft sentences, amongst other (Orts, 2018). A feasible consequence of constructing legal discourse around the axes of impersonality and detachment, which necessarily increases the difficulty for legal texts to be deciphered by the laymen, is the tendency for the “ruling class (the law-makers) (…) to maintain its advantageous social and cultural hegemony upon its audience (the law-takers)” (as cited in Orts, 2018: 808).