LEGAL ENGLISH DISCOURSE: GENRE AND CULTURE-SPECIFICITY

Legal discourse is very much tainted by political, ideological, historical, cultural characteristics, much more so than the language of mathematics or technology. Independently of any culturally, historically and linguistically determined variation, legislation has, however, one and the same function across cultures - it regulates behaviour. The different legal systems have one and the same goal, which is the administration of justice. The aim of this presentation is to discuss the common features of the statutory text in different legislative contexts in terms of its communicative purpose, the participants in the communication, production strategies and then highlight how the diversity in legal ratiocination affects the form and content of legislative expression