Application Of Vagueness In Legal Texts

Vagueness, as an intrinsic inherent characteristic of language, is still ubiquitous in legal language. Analysis of vagueness in legal settings shows that vague expressions are deliberately chosen by speakers or law drafters to communicate in court conversations or in legal documents. The study of vague language or fuzzy language does not see a very long history in China in comparison with other linguistic disciplines, which gives rise to the idea of combining studies of vagueness with legal language in order to have a better understanding of vagueness in law.Law is the demonstration of national power and the guarantee of a stable society. Legal language has been always considered as the most rigorous language use. Without rigorousness and exactness, law will be in lack of compulsory power and authority. As a special branch of language, legal language also has the feature of vagueness. However, indeed it is the existence of vagueness in legal documents that gives much more flexibility in judicial decision. Much effort have been made to study the forms that vague language has in legal speech and legal documents and reasons why vagueness exists in legal language in order to know more about the application of vagueness in legal texts.In order to have a more comprehensive knowledge of the relationship between vague language and legal texts, the author sets out to introduce some studies of vague language before defining some key concepts relevant to this very thesis, including vagueness, fuzziness, generality, ambiguity and legal language. After that, the author proceeds to develop a significant part of this thesis, making efforts to summarize forms of vagueness in legal language, to explain the causes why vagueness exists in legal language and to illustrate how vagueness work as an aid for precision. With a hope of solving ambiguity in legal language by using vague language and of realizing the precision of legal language, the author sets out this paper to draw people's attention to the vagueness in legal language and let them have a correct attitude towards the phenomenon and have a better understanding of the law.