UDC

81’373.4

Authors

Ol’ga A. Krapivkina
Irkutsk National Research Technical University
83 Lermontova St., Irkutsk, 664074, Russian Federation;
e-mail: koa1504@mail.ru

Abstract

The article specifies the semantic functions of the modal verb shall in English legal discourse. The analysis of theoretical and factual material shows that shall performs a number of roles in legal texts, which violates the main drafting requirements: clarity, precision and unambiguity. Lexical units and grammatical constructions with ambiguous meanings obscure legal provisions for lay persons. This contradicts one of the main principles of the rule of law: equitable access to legal information for all citizens. Furthermore, ambiguity of linguistic units involves considerable difficulties for translators of legal texts as they need to develop deep legal knowledge in order to correctly interpret the intentions of legislators. Based on the case study of factual data, we have distinguished between the following functions of shall in legal discourse: permissive, imperative, commissive, conditional, declarative, and stylistic. The article examines three approaches to the use of shall in legal documents: restriction of the meanings of shall to one sense, abolition of shall-use, and keeping all existing meanings of shall. As a result, the author concludes that in legal discourse shall should be replaced by other modal verbs (may, must, should, be to) with less ambiguous meanings. The study is based on English legal texts.

Keywords

translation of legal documents, legal language, modal verb ‘shall’, ambiguity of ‘shall’, meaning of modal verbs

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