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{{a|maxim|}}{{maxim |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.<ref>This is not to say that no lawyers ''do'' speak to their children in legalese, however. Some are so inured to their habit of convolution that they can’t help it. | {{a|maxim|}}{{maxim |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.<ref>This is not to say that no lawyers ''do'' speak to their children in legalese, however. Some are so inured to their habit of convolution that they can’t help it.</ref> | ||
“There are no | “There are no [[metaphor]]s in a trust deed” because legal language is designed to remove — maybe minimise — any possibility for alternative interpretation. 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, heaven forbid — and freight it to all of the world. | ||
So it’s odd, then, that specialist legal language is such porridge. | So it’s odd, then, that specialist legal language is such porridge. |