Moving from a rule-based approach to a functional understanding in Plain Legal Language

Abstract

In the past years, different Hispanic countries have witnessed a rise in Plain Language
(Lenguaje Claro) initiatives by public institutions, including the publication of Plain Language
guides. Since these types of actions seek to influence how a linguistic community uses language
through training, regulations, teaching materials, etc., it is useful to evaluate them in light of the
most recent findings in Applied Linguistics and Writing Pedagogy. In this article, we analyze a
corpus of Plain Legal Language guides in Spanish to identify patterns in the understanding of
clarity within them. Results show that these guides differ very little from one another and that they
have tended to replicate a series of abstract rules focused on grammatical accuracy and style
correctness ("write short sentences," "avoid the passive voice," "respect the subject, verb, object
order") that ended up becoming universal principles for clarity.
This current form-focused approach fails to grasp that clarity is not achieved by
mechanically following form-centered rules at the sentence level. Moreover, it contradicts the most
recent findings in writing pedagogy and may even be what causes so much resistance in certain
professionals. Thus, we draw on the theoretical principles of Myhill et al. (2020) writing
instruction proposal to offer new directions on how to approach plain language teaching and to
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design impactful plain language policies and resources. We argue that plain language should even
be a part of general legal writing instruction, but for that to happen, we need to think of plain
language, not as a set of rules to be followed, but as a set of literacy skills that are useful for any
legal practitioner.