Linguistic complexity of public legal information texts for young persons

IF 0.8 3区文学 Q3 COMMUNICATION

Text & Talk Pub Date : 2023-01-03 DOI:10.1515/text-2021-0187

Monaliza Hernandez Mamac

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract The present study explores the linguistic complexity (LC) of public legal information (PLI) texts for young persons by deploying the Hallidayan model of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. It examines how the Australian legal statutes’ grammatical intricacy and lexical density are reformulated into PLI texts to make them more accessible for a specific vulnerable group. The findings reveal that although the PLI texts were claimed to be written in plain language, they trade some types of complexity for others. The paper extends Halliday’s model of complexity by adding lower rank complexes and embedded clause complexes as realisations of intricacy and density. It proposes “embedded intricacy” as a feature of a hybrid of spoken and written language. Furthermore, the study suggests reconsidering how law can be recontextualised for young persons in a more accessible way.

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青少年公共法律信息文本的语言复杂性

摘要本研究运用韩礼达的词汇密度和语法复杂性模型，探讨了青少年公共法律信息文本的语言复杂性。它研究了澳大利亚法律法规的语法复杂性和词汇密度如何被重新制定为PLI文本，以使特定弱势群体更容易获得这些文本。研究结果表明，尽管PLI文本被声称是用通俗易懂的语言编写的，但它们用某些类型的复杂性来换取其他类型的复杂性。本文扩展了Halliday的复杂性模型，增加了较低阶复数和嵌入子句复数作为复杂性和密度的实现。它提出“嵌入的复杂性”作为口语和书面语言混合的一个特征。此外，该研究建议重新考虑如何以更容易理解的方式为年轻人重新定义法律。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Text & Talk Multiple-

CiteScore

1.70

自引率

16.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.