Keywords
legal language
text intelligibility
How to Cite
Number of views: 722
Number of downloads: 615
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
Authors of texts accepted for publication in „Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza” are required to complete, sign and return to the editor's office the Agreement for granting a royalty-free license to works with a commitment to grant a CC sub-license.
Under the agreement, the authors of texts published in „Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza” grant the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań a non-exclusive, royalty-free license and authorize the use of Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license.
The authors retain the right to continue the free disposal of the work.
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.
Miscellaneous
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań retains the right to magazines as a whole (layout, graphic form, title, cover design, logo etc.).