Archaic diction of legal English

Legal English lexicon is considerably made of archaic legal terms. However, this touch of Archaism is not in vain, it is done on purpose. There are reasons behind this tendency towards archaic words. P. Tiersma states that “ legal language often strives toward great formality, it naturally gravitates towards archaic language ”. According to this quotation, archaisms give a flavor of formality to the language to which they belong. Some lawyers prefer to use antique terms instead of new ones. For example, they use ‘ imbibe ’ as an alternative of ‘ drink ’, ‘ inquire ’ rather than ‘ ask ’, ‘ peruse ’ instead of ‘ read ’ and so on.

Archaic terms belonging to formal style which are used by lawyers are called legalisms and lawyerisms, such as pursuant to (under, in accordance with - відповідно (до чогось), згідно (з чимсь)); prior to (before – до, перш ніж, до моменту); subsequent to (after (після)), without prejudice to (без порушень; без обмеження прав; без ущемлення прав; без шкоди (гриф на початку повідомлення, який означає неможливість його використання у судовому розгляді)); subject to (який підлягає чомусь; за умови, коли (якщо); оскільки інше не передбачене); notwithstanding (незважаючи на).

A special case of fossilized language is the persistence in legal English of compound

adverbs based on the simple deictics ' here ', 'there', 'where' and so on, often referring to the text or document in which they appear or to one under discussion. Common examples include the following:

· hereinafter ( in what follows, below )нижче, далі, надалі (в договорах

та ін. документах)

· thereunder (by virtue of which, нижче (в документі);під цим;

subsequently, below) на підставі цього; відповідно до цього

· hereby (as a result of this) 1) отже, таким чином

2) при цьому; цим