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Part of
Handbook of Terminology: Volume 3. Legal Terminology
Edited by Łucja Biel and Hendrik J. Kockaert
[Handbook of Terminology 3] 2023
► pp. 90–123

Variation of legal terms in monolingual and multilingual contexts

Types, distribution, attitudes and causes

| University of Warsaw
This chapter investigates the variation of legal terminology – types, distribution, attitudes towards it and causes in monolingual and multilingual settings. The chapter proposes the typologies of legal variants according to: formal/conceptual distance (linguistic, denominative, conceptual), time (synchronic, diachronic), acceptance (preferred, permitted, deprecated, proposed) and distribution (intrasystemic, intersystemic, hybrid variants). Attitudes to legal variants vary: linguistic and denominative variation tends to be regarded as undesirable – as a violation of the consistency and continuity principles while conceptual variation may be a useful drafting technique. The final part adapts Freixa’s (2006) typology of the causes of variation (functional, dialectal, discursive, cognitive, interlinguistic) to the legal context, extending it to include causes related to formal and conceptual properties of terms that trigger variation in translation.
Keywords: variation, synonymy, legal terms, variant, translation, multilingual law
Article outline
  • 1.Clarifying key concepts: Variation, synonymy and polysemy
  • 2.The many faces of variation: Types of legal terminological variants
    • 2.1Conceptual distance between variants
      • Linguistic variants
      • Denominative variants
      • Conceptual variants
    • 2.2Time: Diachronic and synchronic variants
    • 2.3Acceptability of variants
  • 3.Distribution of variants: Distributional distance
    • 3.1Intrasystemic variants
      • 3.1.1Intratextual intrasystemic variants
        • Variants at the phrase level: Synonym-strings
        • Variants beyond the phrase level
      • 3.1.2Intertextual intrasystemic variants
    • 3.2Intersystemic variation
    • 3.3Hybrid multilingual settings
      • Multilingual law
      • Transposition
      • Translation
  • 4.Attitudes towards variation
    • 4.1Variation as a violation of the consistency and continuity principles in drafting and translation
    • 4.2Conceptual variation as a drafting technique
  • 5.Causes of legal terminology variation
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 1 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hot.3.var1
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