Plain writing in Legal texts: Legalese in the defendant’s bench

Abstract

Authors of legal documents often fail to provide satisfactory textual and word structure for the complete understanding of their texts, taking the risk of being misunderstood by readers. From one side, the Brazilian legal language makes use of wordiness and, from another side, it employs minimalist expressions (professional jargon) that render it unreachable for ordinary readers. In practice, these strategies are ineffective as they impair a clear, objective, and unambiguous communication. In this context, we believe that such linguistic habits (know as legalese) must be reconsidered in order to reduce the language barriers that currently exist between the dialogue agents: jurists and the general public. The suggestions presented in this article are anchored in reflections on the international movement Plain Language, which targets an objective legal writing.