Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Future of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Harmonization through legal terminology: limitations and possibilities
Zoltan Thaly
ABSTRACT:
Countries with pluricentric languages differ from each other not only in the standard varieties of the respective pluricentric language but also in their legal systems. In the case of the EU member states (MS), the EU attempts to overcome these differences in the legal systems by harmonizing them through its legal acts. Those pluricentric languages that are among the official languages of the EU are not only the official languages of the EU member states but also of third countries. For instance, German, Italian, and French are together with Romansh the official languages of the non-EU member Switzerland. Previous research has either tried to emphasize the differences between the standard linguistic varieties of pluricentric languages in the field of law or to harmonize these differences in a selected legal field. It can be assumed that a combination of these two research objectives without the limitation to a specific area of law would make it possible not only to highlight the differences in the respective legal languages but also to analyze the limits to which extend the EU through its legal acts is capable to harmonize the legal systems not only of the MS but also of third countries. This assumption is to be verified in the context of terminology work based on the micro-comparison. The result of this terminology work will not only answer the question of whether the previously mentioned assumption is correct but should also contribute to a different way of looking at the use of legal terminology.
keywords: EU law, legal language, legal terminology, micro-comparison, pluricentrism,