a brief note on legalese...

...from someone who is neither a lawyer nor a linguist:

In my last year of undergrad, I took a sociolinguistics class focusing on bilingualism in American society with a focus on language in the courts and in medicine. When we discussed professional court translators, we read a bit about some of the controversy about legalese: there is a feeling among some people, including some lawyers, that legal language has become totally inaccessible to people without legal training (which I hope is self-evidently a bad thing, as far as it goes), and that it needs to be simplified. The argument against that, if I recall correctly, goes something along the lines of: legal language is as complex as it is because it is necessary for it to be precise.

I agree with that. True, I do absolutely think that as much as possible, laws, contracts, and other legal documents should be written to be comprehensible to people who don't have legal training. I think it is profoundly unethical to write a law in a way that a reasonably intelligent, educated citizen who is not a specialist in law cannot understand without help; law is a social contract between citizens and government, and governments only exist to serve citizens. But laws and legal documents SHOULD be precise, because they should be enforced; if they are not going to be enforced, you have no business putting it in place to begin with. I think it's profoundly unethical to use the function of law in a symbolic way, or an imprecise way, because intent and vagueness and interpretation are things that get argued over in courts, and court battles always favor the side with the financial resources to stick it out. This is why money is also legal power, unless your laws and contracts are really, really clear and detailed in their language, and it's the detail that makes your eyes cross.

(And man, reading bills, which I do from time to time when I don't want to rely on what someone else is telling me about it, generally takes me upwards of an hour of excruciatingly difficult concentration, punctuated by running to Wikipedia to have a legal phrase explained to me. Following some of those sentences is like doing crossword puzzles in my head, or trying to construct an elaborate logical argument).

So I'm in favor of contracts and laws that use legalese, even though it's harder for me to "get the gist of it" from reading it myself, and I may need a lawyer to be sure I'm interpreting it right, because legalese is the only thing that will tell me what that law or contract will actually have the power to do when I sign it or when it's passed. Otherwise, it's going to be a judge telling me what they think it means when the first lawsuit or court case turns up. Signing a bad, vague contract because it's written in hip language by cool cats who don't use no stinkin' French--anyone who does that is lazy and stupid and shooting themself in the foot. Don't do it.

And as for CREATING a bad, vague contract with hip language and French-bashing--well, I think I'm gonna have to go with the manga blog crowd zeitgeist on this one--for shame, Tokyopop.

bookblogging

Graphic novels/comics:

Tomine, Adrian: Shortcomings
(someday, I'll read a Drawn and Quarterly publication where the characters aren't all self-absorbed jerks. It's a good book, though, and I'm pretty sure Tomine didn't expect me to feel a lot of sympathy for Ben).


Rucka, Greg, author, and Steve Lieber, artist: Whiteout
(possibly volume 1? Not sure. Good art, good writing; the most interesting part of the book to me was actually Rucka's afterword about searching for an artist capable of illustrating this specific story--they had to be able to do B&W, to draw cold, to draw women--as in, human women, and not the superhero fare Rucka presumably has a lot of experience with--and who would do the research necessary for getting the visuals right. He is clearly happy with Lieber on these counts (and so am I!), but it really made me want to see a roundtable with Rucka and Lieber discussing this, and the interplay of the words and story that Rucka wrote and how Lieber made it into pictures on a page. I always want to read that sort of thing, because this particular kind of collaboration is fascinating to me...oh well.

This is Oni Press, by the way).


Aragones, Sergio: The Groo Festival
(as always, I lol'd. And every exchange of "...as any fool can plainly see!" Groo: "I can plainly see that!"--always funny).