It is common for modern writers to use poetic archaisms in titles, or for younger characters to like archaic poetry because it generally seems deeper and more authoritarian than everyday modern English. In fact, I miss the wax seals with my 18th century monogram. Adobe signatures are simply not romantic. Somehow ambivalent in the use of High Middle English. I imagined myself wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe after law school. Now I work from home and wear shorts and no shoes most of the time in Florida. :/ It could be worse: I could be a foolish purveyor of harmful archaisms! On the other hand, archaisms are sometimes used in historical plays such as pride and prejudice: on the contrary, witnesses, while and not forgetting the harmful stew that is the traditional language of contract lawyers, tend to alienate readers, leading them to despise the whole process or assume that it is better left to the lawyers. To practice working with the language of legal documents, try to identify some of the “artistic terms” in the most important legal document in the United States, the Constitution of the United States of America. A copy of the Constitution provided by the National Archives can be consulted at www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html. Gawd helps us. From time to time, someone offered me this defense, but I never saw it printed. It`s absurd. If what`s at stake in a transaction, combined with the time and expense required to set it up, isn`t enough to convince someone to take a transaction seriously, I find it hard to believe that stupid archaisms make them sit down and take note.
Archaisms exist, of course, because language is constantly changing over the years if it is not artificially restricted. Shakespeare`s English – Elizabethan English – evolved into the many dialects of modern English. Archaisms are the most important because they remain used in certain limited areas of activity – particularly law, government and religion – the most conservative and traditional areas of activity in our world. But archaisms can also be used by anyone, at any time in speech or writing, to create an atmosphere of antiquity and also to give one`s own language a sense of officiality, royalty or religious authority. Understanding the jargon of the legal profession is the first step in analyzing a legal document as a primary source. See the “Glossary of Legal Terms” page on the U.S. courts website for a list of common legal terms and their definitions at www.uscourts.gov/Common/Glossary.aspx#glossaryF. For a complete overview of legal writing, see Rupert Haigh, Legal English, 3rd edition (New York: Routledge, 2012). The idea is to make the signatories understand that they are entering into a legally binding relationship in which society itself has an important interest. In other words, the subtext of the formal language used to establish contacts is “attention”; You`re doing something very serious here, so be careful. People who embellish or even lie about their account of events are much more likely to convey a more parsimonious and truthful account, in a court case in which the formality is intended to show participants the consequences of breaking an oath. In legal drafting, archaic language tends to be used to express a particular direction in the text without excessive repetition.
These are essentially sentences that are condensed into individual words. Words like before, about her and the comings and goings are examples of this archaic category of terminology. While these terms were once common in the English language, they have since fallen out of common language and remain prevalent only in “concepts of art”. Neologisms and archaisms are related in that neologisms replace archaisms. Neologisms are new words, while archaisms are obsolete words. For example, “dialing a phone” has become archaic because phones are no longer Rotarians, and “tweeting” is a neologism that has only appeared in the world since Twitter became a new means of communication. Neologisms are new words or new uses for old words. The language of lawyers and laws is full of archaisms as before, this, etc. To be feared in the past meant not to be afraid, but to be afraid.
And how many people today understand that the word “why are you Romeo” means, why not where? How many people still say shan`t instead of not wanting to? Maybe only in the UK. These words, which are so old that they have gone out of fashion or few people know what they mean, are examples of archaisms. “To have and hold… ». Yes, enlightened English is a beautiful thing. And yes, at the time, on Blackstone Day, lawyers were paid to the letter and could stand out by using the profession`s equipment to improve its nobility and public acceptance, and thus the “enforceability” of its practices. I would therefore not object to the necessity of certain mystical measures. But empty gestures in the face of the pump and circumstances are just that. In the business and legal world, it is important for our client or general manager to formulate accurately, deliver a product on time and avoid risks. I know what I`m paid to do (which, at one point in my career, seemed to spend half my time trying to figure out the construction of complex British quantum physics sentences). Also, what we do has become a bit pedestrian these days due to the volume and speed of the business. I hate to attribute the word “commercialized” to this phenomenon, because against it lies the crusade led by Mr.
Adams. That`s not to say I don`t mind reading some Victorian literature after work. But that is not the point. Now, a random but German catch for my $0.02 value: The use of the “/” symbol should be avoided as it is ambiguous in the Boolean sense, as it can be interpreted as one or an and. Language is of particular importance in law because it expresses the law. From wording to interpretation and application, the law depends solely on language. The legal contract is known for its formalities and immutable nature, especially with the use of archaic words and formulas, it is an important genre of legal English. Although formalities offer lawyers the opportunity to achieve “accuracy”, they pose a serious challenge to the layman. This study examined the frequency, structure and importance of archaisms to argue that elements are operational tools in legal contracts. The study data comes from ten reserved legal contracts (scanned and converted to electronic version) of approximately 7116 words from the Akure Judicial Division of Ondo State, Nigeria.
Using corpus linguistic methods using register analysis in the context of systemic functional grammar, the study adopted content analysis methodology to identify archaisms in legal contracts and analyze the data quantitatively and qualitatively.