Stylistic Features of Legal Discourse: A Comparative Study of English and Norwegian Legal Vocabulary

Abstract

The study represents a contrastive investigation of stylistic features peculiar to legal discourse, in English and Norwegian. This is a qualitative study, based on a close reading of parallel English and Norwegian versions of three legal documents. Firstly, the texts were examined with respect to the presence of lexical hallmarks of legal language. A number of lexical items showing characteristic signs of legalese / formalese were identified, briefly examined and then categorized according to the type of patterns they demonstrate. Then, a more detailed analysis of complex prepositional phrases and several verbs, the two categories selected for a more in-depth investigation, was conducted. The latter part involved a quantitative approach based on corpus research, in addition to a qualitative approach. The study showed that besides the commonly recognized hallmarks of legal discourse, such as general legal terminology or proper nouns referring to legal institutions, legal documents, etc., there are other types of lexical items that are characteristic of legal language. Complex prepositions have been pointed out as a distinctive feature of legal texts. It has been examined to what degree this is the case in Norwegian and in English. Another striking observation of stylistic non-correspondences on the lexical level involved the use of verbs. In the texts examined, some verbs found in the Norwegian versions appeared to have a remarkably more formal colouring than the corresponding verbs in the English versions, and vice versa. The study will hopefully encourage further investigations into the comparison of stylistic choices in English and Norwegian, as well as the development of a functional bilingual corpus of legal texts in Norwegian and English.