Доц. др Слободан Д. Јовановић
Факултет за правне и пословне студије Нови Сад

UDK 811.111:34

Acquiring the Vocabulary of Legal English as Assisted by Multilingualism of a Multicultural Environment
 

Summary: English for Legal Purposes (Legal English, or English for Law) engages in the study of the language used by lawyers in written and oral communication. The word is of the language of legal science textbooks, laws, court files, contracts, agreements, and other legal documents, the speech used in courtrooms, in activities of law offices, in all law services and practical functions. At the same time it is crystal clear that English for Legal Purposes serves a range of applications broader than in case of other specialising language registers, not only relating to criminal acts, courts and court procedures, but to all regulations providing, for instance, for company operations, treating issues of intellectual property, environmental protection, questions of international relations as well. The fact that efforts to reform this country’s judiciary have been in progress for quite some time now, accompanied by strong media publicity, also contributes to a rather intensive spreading of the vocabulary of Legal English in the general public. Law and legal terminology influence in a way all spheres of contemporary life, and thus expectations are quite natural that such a truth is pronounced in multinational i.e. multicultural social environments such as the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, where official use of different languages is the subject of legal regulation in the first place. This works aims at presenting the practically confirmed belief that active presence of different languages in an academic environment means a specific wealth certainly also tangible in the area of acquiring and mastering the vocabulary of English for Legal Purposes.