Can contracts be both plain and precise?
- Siebörger, Ian, Adendorff, Ralph D
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian , Adendorff, Ralph D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/123299 , vital:35425 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2011.651944
- Description: One argument against the use of plain language in legal documents is that it is impossible to convey legal meanings in plain language with the same precision as in specialist legal discourse (Hunt, 2003). We tested this claim by redrafting an extract from a lease agreement into plain English in three stages, producing three versions of the extract in progressively plainer English. We submitted these with the original lease agreement to a senior advocate to elicit his opinion on whether the plain-language versions of the extract are equivalent to the original in legal force. Various differences between the versions are analysed using lexical semantics and Systemic Functional Grammar (as described in Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This analysis reveals that the redrafted versions could easily be altered to eliminate the difference between them and the original extract, and that ‘plain language’ as conceived by redrafters of official documents may be easy for non-experts to read, but more difficult for experts. This demonstrates that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to readability is often not tenable, and that plain-language activists can learn much from research (such as Street, 1993) which asserts the existence of a plurality of literacies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian , Adendorff, Ralph D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/123299 , vital:35425 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2011.651944
- Description: One argument against the use of plain language in legal documents is that it is impossible to convey legal meanings in plain language with the same precision as in specialist legal discourse (Hunt, 2003). We tested this claim by redrafting an extract from a lease agreement into plain English in three stages, producing three versions of the extract in progressively plainer English. We submitted these with the original lease agreement to a senior advocate to elicit his opinion on whether the plain-language versions of the extract are equivalent to the original in legal force. Various differences between the versions are analysed using lexical semantics and Systemic Functional Grammar (as described in Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This analysis reveals that the redrafted versions could easily be altered to eliminate the difference between them and the original extract, and that ‘plain language’ as conceived by redrafters of official documents may be easy for non-experts to read, but more difficult for experts. This demonstrates that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to readability is often not tenable, and that plain-language activists can learn much from research (such as Street, 1993) which asserts the existence of a plurality of literacies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Literacy, orality and recontextualization in the parliament of the Republic of South Africa : an ethnographic study
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: South Africa. Parliament (1994- ) -- Language , Bill drafting -- South Africa , South Africa -- Languages -- Political aspects , Sociolinguistics -- South Africa , Language and languages -- Variation , Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) , Functionalism (Linguistics) , Systemic grammar
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2384 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016140
- Description: In parliaments, the tasks of drafting legislation and conducting oversight are accomplished by means of complex chains of spoken, written and multimodal texts. In these genre chains, information is recontextualized from one text to another before being debated in sittings of the houses of parliament. This study employs the point of view afforded by linguistic ethnography to investigate critically the ways in which meanings are recontextualized in one section of such a genre chain, namely the process by which committees of South Africa's National Assembly oversee the budgets of government departments and state-owned entities. It does this to identify possible sources of communication difficulties in this process and suggest ways in which these can be minimized. In so doing, it develops a theoretical model of the discursive effects of recontextualization informed by Latour's (1987) notion of black-boxing as well as Maton's (2011) Legitimation Code Theory. This model uses Interactional Sociolinguistics and elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics, including APPRAISAL and Transitivity as tools to describe the realization of these effects in language. This study finds that ideational and interpersonal meanings are condensed and decondensed at particular points in the genre chain in ways that lead to some MPs’ voices being recontextualized more accurately than others’. It also shows that common sources of communication difficulties in the committee process include differences in political background and understandings of committee procedure and participant roles. It recommends that representatives of departments and entities reporting to the committees should receive a fuller prebriefing on their roles; that MPs should receive training on asking clear, focused questions; and that the role of committee secretaries as procedural advisors should be strengthened.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: South Africa. Parliament (1994- ) -- Language , Bill drafting -- South Africa , South Africa -- Languages -- Political aspects , Sociolinguistics -- South Africa , Language and languages -- Variation , Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) , Functionalism (Linguistics) , Systemic grammar
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2384 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016140
- Description: In parliaments, the tasks of drafting legislation and conducting oversight are accomplished by means of complex chains of spoken, written and multimodal texts. In these genre chains, information is recontextualized from one text to another before being debated in sittings of the houses of parliament. This study employs the point of view afforded by linguistic ethnography to investigate critically the ways in which meanings are recontextualized in one section of such a genre chain, namely the process by which committees of South Africa's National Assembly oversee the budgets of government departments and state-owned entities. It does this to identify possible sources of communication difficulties in this process and suggest ways in which these can be minimized. In so doing, it develops a theoretical model of the discursive effects of recontextualization informed by Latour's (1987) notion of black-boxing as well as Maton's (2011) Legitimation Code Theory. This model uses Interactional Sociolinguistics and elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics, including APPRAISAL and Transitivity as tools to describe the realization of these effects in language. This study finds that ideational and interpersonal meanings are condensed and decondensed at particular points in the genre chain in ways that lead to some MPs’ voices being recontextualized more accurately than others’. It also shows that common sources of communication difficulties in the committee process include differences in political background and understandings of committee procedure and participant roles. It recommends that representatives of departments and entities reporting to the committees should receive a fuller prebriefing on their roles; that MPs should receive training on asking clear, focused questions; and that the role of committee secretaries as procedural advisors should be strengthened.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- «
- ‹
- 1
- ›
- »