(Un)readability of legal English on the basis of the UK Public General Acts enacted in 2013
(Un)readability of legal English on the basis of the UK Public General Acts enacted in 2013
Author(s): Rafał Krzysztof MatusiakSubject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
Keywords: legal English; plain English; readability; sentence length
Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to discuss the readability of legal English on the basis of the UK Public General Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The corpus includes a complete collection of 33 UK Public General Acts enacted in 2013. The number of running words amounts to about 900 000. The analysis of the present material reveals that despite the fact that almost four decades have passed since the Plain English Campaign was launched, the UK legislation passed in 2013 is invariably characteristic of quite a high readability index. However, some syntactic simplifications might be captured in the material being scrutinized.
Journal: Studia Anglica
- Issue Year: 226/2017
- Issue No: 7
- Page Range: 121-130
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English
