There are no metaphors in a trust deed

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There are no metaphors in a trust deed speaks to the facile attempt of lawyers to remove ambiguity from a language which is intrinsically shot through with it. Legal language is a special variety of discourse: It is meant to be a bit like a racing car. Amazing at its particular purpose; useless for anything else. The same way you wouldn’t take a Formula One car to the shops, you wouldn’t speak to your children in legalese.

There are no metaphors in a trust deed because legal language is designed to remove any possibility for alternative interpretations. This is not meant to be some hermeneutic dialectic between reader and text here -— the words are meant to carry their own, singular, categorical, unambiguous meaning — no room for figurative interpretations, haven forbid — and freight it to all of the world.

So it’s odd then that specialist legal language is such porridge. It is porridge, but railing against it and saying it should not be so is to miss the point. The point is to understand the system dynamics that have made it so. That is the key to delivering the world of porridge.

See also

• Semantic code project