Sometimes on a DVD (you remember those, right? Way back when, like 5 years ago, yes?) you get previews that are rated before the preview starts with the curious statement “this preview has been approved for appropriate ages.”
What the heck does that mean? “The preview may be seen by anyone of an appropriate age to watch this preview,” is the obvious interpretation That’s nice and informative.
Alright, I assume it’s their convoluted way of saying this preview matches the audience rating for the main feature, but it surely doesn’t say that. What it actually says literally has no meaning, semantically null, an empty statement. How does an empty statement protect them from being attacked by other lawyers? (Which is mostly all that such statement are meant to do anyway.)
Well… I assume (actually, I have strong reason to believe) that it’s because the phrase has already been tested in court and some judge ruled that the actual meaning of the phrase is such-and-such, in spite of what the words themselves say to any expert in language and communication.
Meaning Legal Language is not all that connected to Consumer Language. Ack(1)
Alright, do I have a point here? Yes… I mean, I kind of already said it, actually, but since this posting is about clear language let me say it clearly. 🙂
When legal phrases become so obtuse that their intended meaning
is impossible to know without a lawyer specialized in that area
interpreting it for you then it isn’t “law” any more, not as we were
taught it, not as it says on the label (see the inscription on the
statue of “Justice”(2)) and it certainly has little to do with justice.
You would have to look more to Special Interests and to the history that led up to the particular phrase in question in order to actually understand it. Which means, even a lawyer might not know why it’s worded the way it is. Sheesh…
When a “legal phrase” is so strangely worded that its meaning can be contested, when its meaning must be adjudicated by some judge in a court, then its “real” meaning ends up recorded some where else (in a court transcript say, or in those endless law books you see in a lawyer’s office, though they don’t use them any more), and that’s just plain sully. Might just as well put the public version of that “warning” in Klingon, or High Valerian. Silliness.
Short version: justice(3) and sloppy languaging are incompatible. Always have been. Always will be.
Yes, it matters.
Qapla` (Victory!)
[30]
(1) Ack, ack, ack! Even.
(2) Oh… you saw me palm that card, did you? Ok, there is no inscription on the statue of the Goddess Justicia. What? You didn’t know Lady Justice is/was a Goddess from the Roman Pantheon? (Nike, by the way, is a Greek God, god of Victory — pagans, all of us) Call me surprised (not really — very few folks know that). Justicia was added to the Roman Pantheon by the emperor Augustus (first Emperor and the fellow who changed Rome from a nominal Republic [it really wasn’t any more by that time, but rather a Plutocracy, much like America has become recently] to a dictatorship.) However! If there were an inscription on the statues of Justicia as she appears in legal systems around the World, it would be something like “equal, fair and true justice for all who appear before me, regardless of social and political status, regardless of money or lack or it, regardless of power or lack of it.” Maybe that’s why there isn’t such an inscription? Yeah? The rich might really come to resent that. Maybe…
On the other hand, the American Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Certainly the common American attitude toward immigrants does not live up to that (really, it never has), yet the statue and its inscription are still there. So, maybe I’m making a lot of stew out of one oyster (as the old expression goes). Or maybe I’m looking for consistent, open and honest behaviors… Naw, that would be silly.
(3) Even if we could ever agree on a definition of that most slippery of words: “Justice.” Maybe the Goddess Justicia herself knows its meaning, but I’m pretty sure it’s not what most people think it is. I think…