The reversibility of content as a limit for the clarification of legal discourse

Abstract

Plain legal language involves the application of certain discursive procedures on legal documents in order to make them more understandable for their recipients without specialized knowledge. Some authors point out that these transformations, which impact on the verbal level and also on other significant matters, can compromise the legal precision of the resolutions and even generate grounds for challenge. This article explores the possibility of defining a limit for the implementation of clarification procedures in legal discourse. In this sense, the text proposes to use the principle of reversibility of content, used in translation between natural languages, as a parameter to determine to what extent legal documents can be simplified to guarantee citizens' right to understand. Likewise, it proposes to determine the core contents of the specific legal communication processes in order to define a minimum degree of reversibility that allows the recipient to access legal content that affects them. Any clarification procedure applied to legal discourse must respect this lower threshold, to ensure the effectiveness of the act of communication and secure the rights of the recipient.