Here-, there-, and every where-: Exploring the role of pronominal adverbs in legal language

Abstract

Many have claimed that pronominal adverbs, such as hereby, thereafter, and wherein, are a frequent, distinctive, and problematic in their use in legal language (Tiersma, 1999; Mellinkoff, 2004). The purpose of this study is to examine those claims empirically. In the present study, the prevalence of PAs in legal registers is compared to more general registers of contemporary American English to determine the extent to which these words are distinctly legal. The study will also explore why different types of PAs may be (in)frequent in specific legal registers to better understand their use. The frequency of PAs was extracted from corpora that are designed to represent six registers of English (3 legal; 4 non-legal). Rates of occurrence of PAs per text were then compared across registers using Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn post-hoc test with an eta2 effect size. Subsequently, a functional analysis describing the uses of PAs was also conducted. The results indicate that PAs are highly restricted to legal registers because of functions that they serve. The types of functions that PAs perform within a text are discussed. A closer examination of the PAs considered both individually as well as grouped by locative adverb (i.e., here-, there-, and where-) indicates that some PAs are also more distinctive to certain legal registers for different reasons. This study opens the discussion as to the utility and necessity of PAs in legal language and provides suggestions for legal writers on how to use or remove PAs without inhibiting clarity or effectiveness.