IDENTIFICATION AND CAUSES OF THE AMBIGUITY AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS CREATED BY TERMINOLOGICAL VOCABULARY IN LEGAL ENGLISH DOCUMENTS

Abstract

This study concerns about the identification of ambiguous features of legal English language which create ambiguity for a common reader of English language. The central contention of this thesis is that common readers of English language face ambiguity in the reading of any legal English documents due to the diverse features of the legal English language. It has explored by this research study that it is possible to detect such barriers and to replace these ambiguous features of legal English language with the features of plain English language. The primary intention of the study is to explore the lexical ambiguous features of legal English language which are varied to plain English language. Qualitative approach was used in this research study and the data were analyzed by the methodology of Content Analysis. Fifteen documents of legal English language were selected by convenient technique in this study from the Lahore Bar and Nankana Sahib Bar. There are three types of documents (Application, judgments and contracts) which cover all the aspects of legal system. Consequently, the findings confirmed that most of the common persons of English language face ambiguity in comprehension of legal English language due to the diverse lexical features of legal English language from plain English language. They need to learn a mixture of general and specific legal English terminologies, polysemous terms, archaic words, foreign words, words with suffixes and slang words in legal English language with the comparison of the words of plain English language which are the causes of ambiguity and misunderstanding in the legal English language.