Written and spoken language differ in structure and style. In some of the regions written and spoken languages have assumed diglossic proportions. Tamil has to be seen at three levels, as it is spoken, as it is written and as it is read. In most languages the legal register has remained stereotyped and frozen in vocabulary and syntax. The legal language is farther from even the standard written language. In legal terminology, on account of historical reasons, Persian, Sanskrit, English and the regional vocabularies have co-existed with loan blends, loan translations which are not to be found in the standard written registers. There is creative tension between the spoken and written languages, but with regional language accepted as court languages, the tension becomes triangular. The written court language being one step farther removed from written standard language creates problems particularly for the illiterate or even the neo-literate who constitute 60% of the Indian population.

The problem of language is not only one of register and styles but also of dialects. Many people do not know that languages like English, Chinese and Hindi may have single labels but they are communicationally heterogeneous English, for example, differs considerably not only at spoken and written levels even for ordinary purposes, but also is dialectally diverse. Hindi-English, Bengali-English, Tamil-English are different dialects of Indian English which in turn is a dialect of the English language.

Legal language in dominant mono-lingual situations andin multilingual situations pose different sorts of problems. If a mono model is sought to be imposed on a pluricultural situation when even the major regional language speakers could have problems with the one language which is sought to be the language of administration and the language of law. As in a plurilingual country so in a plurilingual region, one language chosen for legal purposes would have comparable problems.

Mellinkoff (David Mellinkoff: 1963, The Language of the Law, vi) discussing written legal language in America observes “In a vast literature the portion devoted to the language of the law is a single grain of sand at the bottom of a great sea. The profession is properly more concerned with rights, obligations, and wrongs, and the incidental procedures....At this writing, the subject of “language” is absent from most law indexes and only in capsule form in the rest. It is certainly not too early, nor is it too late, to commence examination of the language lawyers use.” He further observes that legal language has inherent mannerisms and often enough lacks clarity. It is pompous, (solemn, supreme); it is filled with self-righteous expressions (clearly pointed out, dispose of the argument) and it is simply dull. He goes on to add that legal language use assumes specialised meaning (action for ‘law suit’, instrument for legal document). It has rare words from old and middle English (aforesaid, witnesseth); Latin words and phrases (corpus delicit, mens rea); French words not in the general vocabulary (demurrer, fee simple); terms of art (contributory negligence, eminent domain); professional argot (inferior court, issue of fact); formal expressions (approach the bench, the deceased, Your Honour); words with flexible meanings (adequate, approximately); and attempts at extreme precision (irrecoverable, never, and no other purpose).

If this is said of English by an English speaker, then much has to be said of an Indian language by an Indian language speaker who is governed by law that is English in essence, written in English and has to be interpreted in an Indian language. It is possible to infer that at various stages in the interpretation of law to Indian language speakers there is a blindness spot in the perception and comprehension of law from the lawyer to the client. Distortion of meaning in law is possible.

Society in India is hierarchically stratified in terms of caste and class. Respect for the different is the underlying norm in a society that is multilingual and multicultural. And if one has to concede tot he fact that 2% of the population in India who also form the elite, are English knowing people, then one can imagine the problems of English being the legal language under the Indian language conditions.

Crystal and Davy [Investigating English Style (1969)] in their study have identified structural and organisational characteristics of legal texts. According to them “Legal language is Instrumental language”, i.e., to record contracts, impose conditions, confer rights and privileges, etc. The style of language is peculiar, the sentences are long. It has many distinctive characteristics. It limits the use of pronouns, truncated verb phrases in favour or repetition in order to minimise confusion and ambiguity. And semantic principles not generally used in ordinary English is used in legal documents.

Jeremy Bentham, as early as 1776 demanded that laws ought to be codified in such clear language that the ordinary man could understand his legal rights (quoted in Hager, John, 1959). Let’s simplify legal language. Rocky Mountain Law Review, 32 : 74-86). As is well known, efforts are being made to spread the regional language in the area of education, administration and mass communication. Written texts about legal rights and laws written in simple language in regional languages can only be disseminated through lawyers, judges and legal professions, and this can be attained by concerted efforts of researchers in the field. What is of immediate importance is the study of the style and register of the languages actually used in the courtroom. It has been pointed out that there is a necessity of change in the use of archaic and absolete forms, foreign words and phrases, unusual meaning assigned to ordinary terms and the unusual length of sentences devoid of punctuation. This is a necessary step so as to allow most people to understand the language. In other words, legal language needs to be intelligible to the consumers of law.