PARAPHRASES OF LEGAL TERMINOLOGY BASED ON LAY PERCEPTIONS

Abstract

This paper discusses the issue of plain legal language in Japan. First, several legal language battles between legal and lay people are shown, followed by a paraphrase work on civil legal terms based on a research titled ‘A Study on Paraphrase of Civil Legal Terms based on Lay Perception’, which was funded by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from April of 2012 to March of 2013. The research was conducted, using corpus analysis of civil legal terms appeared in ordinary writings and questionnaire of legal experts. The finding of the research is that ‘misunderstood’ legal words which appear more than 50% in non-legal writings is an obstacle to lay understanding. One ‘misunderstood’ legal term ‘intent’ (故意) is selected for paraphrase analysis from the point of views of antonym, synonym, derivative of legal term.

Keywords

• civil legal terms
• corpus analysis
• synonym
• antonym
• derivative