Stylistics and ESP: A lexico-grammatical study of legal discourse

Abstract

This paper is a stylistic investigation of the lexical and grammatical patterns in a selection of legal discourse. Employing linguistic theories derived from the postulations of Hutchinson and Waters, Dudley-Evans and St. John and Strevens on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) as well as Halliday's scale and category grammar as its theoretical and analytical framework, the study exemplifies the step by step procedure and the effectiveness of stylistic analysis in revealing the lexical and grammatical complexities of the language of law. Drawing on the relationship between stylistics and ESP, the research focuses on jargon, contextual collocations, tautology, pleonasms, archaisms, periodic and subordinate clause structures for which legal documents are well known. It observes that the need to avoid ambiguity and loopholes which may be exploited by opponents of the law - which in itself is the overriding concern of the drafters of legal documents - often paradoxically results in ambiguity itself. The study concludes that, stylistically, the language of law is at once necessary, artificial, generally inaccessible and redundant. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.