Keywords
legal language
text intelligibility
How to Cite
Number of views: 895
Number of downloads: 761
Abstract
The article discusses the practical use of plain language rules in editing law-related texts. The author believes that it is possible and worth the effort to write legal texts in accordance with the rules of plain language, i.e. with the expected reader in mind, giving examples of rewritten sentences taken from the articles for an online law portal. The author divides the processes in terms of ‘structural order’ and ‘linguistic order’ and shows that even cosmetic editing in the spirit of plain language, without affecting the text’s structure, improves its intelligibility.
References
Kimble Joseph (2011), Strike Three for Legalese, w: tenże, Lifting the Fog of Legalese. Essays on Plain Language, Durham.
Piekot Tomasz, Zarzeczny Grzegorz, Moroń Ewelina (2019), Standard „plain lan¬guage” w polskiej sferze publicznej, w: Lingwistyka kryminalistyczna. Teoria i praktyka, red. Monika Zaśko-Zielińska, Krzysztof Kredens, Wrocław, s. 197–214.
Pinker Steven (2016), Piękny styl. Przewodnik człowieka myślącego po sztuce pisania XXI wieku, Sopot.
Wróblewski Bronisław (1948), Język prawny i prawniczy, Kraków.
Zandberg-Malec Justyna (2020), Prawnicy chcieliby pisać prosto, ale nie mają czasu, „The Clarity Journal”, nr 81, s. 19–21.
Zandberg-Malec Justyna, Pietryka Artur, Kozłowska Maria (2020), Zrozumiałe poucze¬nia dla zatrzymanych, „Co do zasady”, 10 grudnia, https://codozasady.pl/p/zrozu¬miale-pouczenia-dla-zatrzymanych [dostęp: 4 stycznia 2021].
License
Authors
The Author declares that they are entitled to personal and property (material) copyrights to their work published in “Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza”, and that these rights are not limited by the terms of Author’s agreement. The Author warrants the originality, authorship, and sole ownership of all rights to the Work, and affirms that they have the right to grant all kinds of licenses hereinabove without infringing on the intellectual property rights of any third party, including personal rights.
The Author(s) retains copyright to their article and the right to freely dispose of the work, granting Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence under the Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) Creative Commons licence to use the Work without territorial restrictions for an indefinite period in the fields of use designated in the Author’s agreement.
Users
Interested Internet users are entitled to use works published in „Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza” since 2016 under the following conditions:
- attribution - obligation to provide, together with the distributed work, information about the authorship, title, source (link to the original work, DOI) and the license itself.
- no derivatives - the work must be preserved in its original form, without the author's consent it is not possible to distribute the modified work, such as translations, publications, etc.
Copyrights are reserved for all texts published before 2016.
Other
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań retains the right to the journal as a whole (including its layout, graphic design, title, cover design, logo and more).