I think that it’s pretty relevant that this is from this year’s Ig Nobel prize winner in literature: https://news.mit.edu/2022/mit-cognitive-scientists-win-ig-no...
Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
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Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#12> (b) suggest such processing difficulties result largely from working-memory limitations imposed by long-distance syntactic dependencies (i.e., poor writing) as opposed to a mere lack of specialized legal knowledge;
It seems like a misrepresentation to call “long-distance syntactic dependencies” in a legal document the same thing as poor writing when comparing to other genres of written English including those that are written for pleasure. When exploring law the question an individual usually has is “If I do X, does Y happen?”. But legal frameworks don’t cover individual situations, they paint broad strokes over the human experience.
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#13Same with academic papers. Most of my efforts go into dealing with constant loss of attention that happens when I have to look up unnecessarily complex words or improperly defined symbols and variable names. I feel stupid until I realize that the paper is actually about a very simple concept. It doesn't have to be this hard to read.
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the same reason why programmers can't just use normal English when talking about software.
So because the computer doesn't understand English, or because the terminology is often new and constantly changing?
In a way, both - along with a third reason. English (like any natural language) is ambiguous and often depends on context. The attempt to "reinforce" ideas in English so that there is no way to have different interpretations is what lands you with legalese. Imagine having to program with that.
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#15I am a lawyer who works with but doesn't do a MASSIVE amount of contract writing like some.
I don't think "poor writing" is the right phrasing here, which implies ignorance or ineptitude.
I think the reason contracts aren't readable to laypeople is because laypeople aren't the intended audience. We all know no one reads these, so we write them to future lawyers and courts who might want to get our clients in trouble. We try to create loopholes for our future selves.
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#16> (b) suggest such processing difficulties result largely from working-memory limitations imposed by long-distance syntactic dependencies (i.e., poor writing) as opposed to a mere lack of specialized legal knowledge; It seems like a misrepresentation to call “long-distance syntactic dependencies” in a legal document the same thing as poor writing when comparing to other genres of written English including those that…
I'm guessing what they mean with long distance dependencies is section 3 of the contract sets one scenario and section 46 an exception to it.
This happens (normally, intentionally) when there is a section up front or at the end that sets defined terms. It also happens in a way we lawyers agree kind of sucks but whatever who cares - when after a long negotiation we're adjusting one small point and don't want to go through the effort and consternation of rewriting the whole thing.
Legal negotiation culture states that the longer/more involved your edits, the more presumptively unreasonable they are. So there is low incentive to rewrite something to make it "read better."
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the same reason why programmers can't just use normal English when talking about software.
So because the computer doesn't understand English, or because the terminology is often new and constantly changing?
Because normal human language doesn't describe things exactly and exhaustively specifying the edge cases; as soon as you need do that (and you do, in law, programming, math proofs, etc), even if you don't use a single specific term you get language that looks like legalese.
In essence, none of the commonly used English words means exactly what you need to, so you need to add many explicit qualifiers to specify which parts of that wide and vague meaning shall apply and which shall not.
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#18TBF those structures do exist for a reason. Just take the “Total Compensation” as an example. Breaking it out as shown in the paper does work, but now some language is repeated; in an edit (and most contracts are edited rather than being created de novo) one of the duplicated clauses could be edited and the other overlooked, especially if they become separated by successive edits.
I’m sure there are obscurantist
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#19This is the same in any advanced academic field. Ever tried talking to a sociologist or a philosopher?
> There was this sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on the list. I had this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly so I can figure out what the hell it means.”
> So I stopped-at random-and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.”
> Then I went over the next sentence, and realised that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind of empty business: “Sometimes people read; sometimes people listen to the radio,” and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, and when I finally deciphered it, there was nothing to it.
— Richard Feynman
Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
#20The sheer verbosity of the average person on the internet has always amazed me. You can't say anything in less than 3 solid paragraphs. Sometimes I wonder if the problem is mine. It certainly seems a hinderance to communication.