Peter M. Tiersma’s seminal book ‘Legal Language’ discusses the historical development of legal English as a special “sublanguage”, and analyses many of the key features of  legal language which can be of use to anyone involved in legal translation.

EN: Peter M. Tiersma’s seminal book ‘Legal Language’ discusses the historical development of legal English as a special “sublanguage”, and analyses many of the key features of  legal language which can be of use to anyone involved in legal translation.

A summary of the book can be found at this link: http://www.languageandlaw.org/LEGALLANG/LEGALLANG.HTM

In the book he asks the interesting question, “ So What Is Legal Language Exactly?”

In short his answer is he says that, “legal language has been called an argot, a dialect, a register, a style, and even a separate language.  In fact, it is best described with the relatively new term sublanguage.  A sublanguage has its own specialized grammar, a limited subject matter, contains lexical, syntactic, and semantic restrictions, and allows “deviant” rules of grammar that are not acceptable in the standard language.  However we describe it, legal language is a complex collection of linguistic habits that have developed over many centuries and that lawyers have learned to use quite strategically.”