Be Clear! The Role of Clarity in Legal Communication

Authors

  • Karin Luttermann Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt

Abstract

The rights of persons with disabilities have been strengthened in the past years. The impulse came from the passing of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its adoption in many parts of the world. In Germany, its ratification has led to numerous measures (laws, projects) for the creation of an inclusive society. Language is of special importance in this context. Easy Language is a form of barrier-free communication and is meant to make (specialist) information and (professional) communication accessible to certain target groups (among others, persons with mental disabilities, aphasia, German as a second language). It originated from practice-oriented work. Theoretically and empirically assessing its possibilities, potentials and limits urgently requires linguistic research, too. On a text linguistic basis, the contribution argues for the use of Clear Language and for a wider perspective on the concept of lay persons within expert-lay communication. The key question is how legal texts can be clearly formulated and conveyed to the addressees (including the average person)? – What is offered here is a sound solution: the Comprehensibility Model of Legal Language (“Rechtslinguistisches Versta?ndlichkeitsmodell”).

Downloads

Published

2021-02-23

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2021): Special issue on "Communicating the law and public information to vulnerable audiences"

Section

Contents

License

Copyright Agreement with Authors

Authors submitting a paper to JOAL automatically agree to confer a limited license to JOAL if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. This license allows JOAL to publish a manuscript in a given issue, by any means, anywhere in the world. Authors whose submissions have been accepted then have a choice of:

  1. Dedicating the article to the public domain. This allows anyone to make any use of the article at any time, including commercial use. A good way to do this is to use the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication Web form; see http://creativecommons.org/license/publicdomain-2?lang=en.
  2. Retaining some rights while allowing some use. For example, authors may decide to disallow commercial use without permission. Authors may also decide whether to allow users to make modifications (e.g.translations, adaptations) without permission. A good way to make these choices is to use a Creative Commons license.
    • Go to http://creativecommons.org/license/.
    • Choose and select license. Choose "generic" if you are in the U.S. and "text" for JOAL articles.
    • What to do next — you can then e–mail the license html code to yourself. Do this, and then forward that e–mail to JOAL’s editors. Put your name in the subject line of the e–mail with your name and article title in the e–mail.
    Background information about Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/.
  3. Retaining full rights, including translation and reproduction rights. Authors may use the statement:  © Author 2013 All Rights Reserved. Authors may choose to use their own wording to reserve copyright. If you choose to retain full copyright, please add your copyright statement to the end of the article.