INTRODUCTION

One commonly heard joke among lawyers hinges on this sentence from a lawyer: I charge $200 to answer three questions. The pun is in the ambiguity of the word question, which in a legal context refers to questions of law, that is, arising issues related to legal points. This simple example shows the difference between the type of language used in everyday situations (General English, or GE) and the type that belongs to specialized fields such as business, science, or law, among others (English for Special Purposes, or ESP). LEGAL ENGLISH Legal English or English for Legal Purposes is the variety of English used by lawyers and other legal professionals in the course of their work, especially in writing texts. Although traditionally confined to English-speaking countries, in today's international world, English has become the language used in legal matters all around the world, including European law and the UN international law. Modern legal English is based on standard English. However, it contains a number of particular features concerning terminology, linguistic structure, linguistic conventions and punctuation; all of which have their roots in the history of English as a legal language. During the Medieval period, lawyers used a mixture of Latin, French and English. Lawyers often offered pairs of words from different languages to avoid ambiguity, or for emphasis. Doublets and triplets have become a stylistic habit of Legal English: breaking and entering (English/French), have and hold (English only). Deriving from Latin, Legal English contains a large number of names and titles ending in -er, -or, and -ee (employer/employee). Furthermore, a fair amount of words and phrases from French and Latin are still used (mens rea=guilty mind). As regards terminology, many difficult words and phrases are used. Legal terms of art are words or expressions with fixed meanings not used outside the field of Legal English (waiver, restrictive covenant). Besides, some ordinary words are used with a different meaning in a legal context (redemption=the liberation of an estate in real property from a mortgage).

Other characteristic of Legal English is the insufficient use of punctuation; the peculiar word order employed in legal documents (the provisions for termination hereinafter appearing), sometimes influenced by French grammatical structures; the use of unfamiliar pro-forms (the said, the aforementioned); or the frequent use of pronominal adverbs (hereof, whereof). Legal language is much more complex than everyday language, which is why it is referred to casually as lawspeak or legalese. It is, in fact, so complex, resulting in such a formal, intimidating and confusing documents, that many writers have criticized it, for example, Charles Dickens in Bleak House, Pickwick Papers or Oliver Twist. Today there is some international debate as to the necessity of such impressive writing instead of legal matters being conducted in a language that is easily understood by the general public. However, without an understanding of Legal English it would be impossible to correctly understand and interpret the extensive laws made previously. BIBLIOGRAPHY Haigh, R. Legal English. Oxford: Routledge-Cavendish, 2009.