Re: intelligibilty and clarity of texts and communications...


SabDor@xxxxxxxxx schrieb:

If you take a bank-customer deposit contract, for instance (as well as
all standard corporational contracts with their customers), the
document may include hundreds of words, complex sentences, conditioned
sections, definitions etc, most of which are rarely addressed.
The problem is that by legal fiction, we, cusotmers of these
corporations, are considered as we "agreed" to these documnets.
This is legal fiction, a very common legal tool. The problem is that it
is very remote from the reality of things (most people, including legal
professionals, never read those "agreements"), and causes many pratical
problems when issues get to courts.

What I'm trying to figure out, is whether the high level of complexity,
and low level of clarity, are actually necessary.
And yes, I already have an opinion. From my own experience (I'm a
practicing lawyer, in Hebrew, in Tel Aviv, for about 15 years), they
are not.

There is a conflict here. Language is never as precise as mathematics
(see the imprecise nature of language I wrote about elsewhere).
Although this ambiguity might appear a disadvantage in fact it is what
makes us human and meets our various needs. Various layers of
communication such as emotions, attitude or just plain communication
cannot be expressed in mathematics at the same time but are implied in
language. Expressing multiple meanings, coding more messages into one
short sentence, playing on words, making jokes, writing literature,
making music and many more are imbedded in a fascinating tool called
language.

Simplifying legal texts makes expressing the legal intricacies without
legal register difficult. A shortcut is not possible. You will then
need long texts to convey the same meaning. In a way it is like
translating one language into the other. It is incomplete without notes
and additional background information. On the other hand, contracts
between people necessitate help from experts. Why do we then need
lawyers at a court or tax advisers to file our tax? Since our life and
needs have become more complicated there is a need for specialisation
with both its advantages and disadvantages. In a way it is analogous to
the emergence of new languages. This means translation (modulation and
demodulation) will stay part of our communication.

I don't believe an algorithmic, mathematical, quantitative way will
meet these complicated needs (at least not in the near future). You
need to understand that language is much more (complicated) than
communicating precise messages. As a human property it leaves room for
ambiguity or even implying something totally different from what is
expressed. Never forget language reflects the speaker's/writer's
psyche, emotions and attitudes additionally. Psychology is thus part of
this complicated communication process. Furthermore, metaphor plays a
very important part in language. In fact language itself is a metaphor.
There are two types of metaphors to be considered:
lexical metaphor
grammatical metaphor

I have already written about this problem in two earlier posts:
1. Layers of communication and implicature
2. Linguistic predictions (the superiority of analogue communication
over digital, mathematical communication)
Regards
Jamshid

.

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