Classification of English Terms and Their Linguistic Features
According to the meaning structure or semantic scope, such special terms can be divided into four forms: ordinary terms, proprietary special meaning terms, special legal terms and borrowed terms.
1. Commonly used terms There are two kinds of commonly used terms in legal English: first, they are widely used in legal language and are indispensable words in all aspects of social daily life. There is no semantic difference between these two registers, which is easy to understand. For example: behavior, writing, witness, goods, individuals, sum, signature, insurance, gambling, rules, marriage. Second, it represents a specific legal concept, but with the expansion of the scope of application and the close relationship between the national vocabulary, it often exchanges and influences each other. As a result, the terminology that was originally known only to legal workers has expanded to the field of national vocabulary. For example: law (law), lawyer (lawyer), debt (debt), murder (murder), crime (crime), prison (prison), court (court), contrac.
T (contract), police (police), will (will), fine (fine), punishment (penalty), sentence (judgment), judgment (trial), robbery (robbery), theft (theft) and so on.
With the popularization of legal knowledge and the development of legal system, the number of such terms will continue to increase. Common terms in legal English are widely used because law is universal. Therefore, such terms usually have less stylistic information and a neutral stylistic meaning.