Fach(sprach)lichkeit und Verständlichkeit in Verträgen

    Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceedingConference abstract in proceedingResearch

    Abstract

    The purpose of this paper is to examine accessibility in legal texts, in this case German tenancy contracts.
    Legal texts can use a citizen perspective or a court perspective (Gunnarsson 1982) and give preference to
    the understanding of the parties involved in the contract or to the judging by the judge in case of a
    litigation between the parties.
    On the one hand tradition demands that LSP texts are unambiguous, exact, economical (Fluck 1996),
    which gives them some conventional linguistic features, usually considered to make the texts difficult, on
    the other hand there is a legal demand that contracts must be accessible to non-professionals who have
    less knowledge of genre and linguistic conventions, and this may entail that legal language is changed
    accordingly.
    I wish to show what kinds of differences might exist between contracts between professionals and
    contracts between professionals and non-professionals if the text producer takes into account the lack of
    knowledge of the non-professional involved in the contract. My – mostly qualitative – analysis, on the
    basis of a model of analysis that I developed for these studies, shows that non-professional contracts are
    modified in linguistic categories (“lexis” and “syntax”) and in a content related category (“references and
    intertextuality”).
    The results provide knowledge about LSP and linguistic features of legal language, more precisely of
    different types of contracts, i.e. language in use. They can be used for didactic purposes in teaching legal
    language and also by language and law professionals for acquiring knowledge on contracts in relation to
    non-professionals.
    The paper will be presented in German.
    Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise: Lagtexters begriplighet. Lund: LiberFörlag (1982)
    Fluck, Hans-Rüdiger: Fachsprachen. Einführung und Bibliographie. 5. Aufl. Tübingen / Basel: A. Francke
    Verlag (1996)
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationReconceptualizing LSP. Online proceedings of the XVII European LSP Symposium 2009
    EditorsCarmen Heine, Jan Engberg
    Number of pages1
    Place of PublicationÅrhus
    PublisherAarhus School of Business
    Publication date2010
    ISBN (Electronic)9788778824745
    Publication statusPublished - 2010
    EventEuropæisk symposium om fagsprog. : Metoder og formål - (Re-)konceptualisering af fagsprogsforskning. - Århus, Denmark
    Duration: 17 Aug 200921 Aug 2009
    Conference number: XVII

    Conference

    ConferenceEuropæisk symposium om fagsprog. : Metoder og formål - (Re-)konceptualisering af fagsprogsforskning.
    NumberXVII
    Country/TerritoryDenmark
    CityÅrhus
    Period17/08/200921/08/2009

    Keywords

    • German
    • genre analysis
    • legal language
    • expert-layman communication
    • tenancy contracts

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