MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW GRADUATION THESIS B. DEGREE IN ENGLISH Major: Legal English THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH REFLECTING IN ENGLISH LITERATURE WORKS AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS Supervisor : PHAM THI THUY DUNG, MA Student : TRAN QUYNH HOA Student ID : 1852202010025 Class : 100 – LE43A Ho Chi Minh City, 2022 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I consider it a great honour to be one of the students who are qualified to complete the graduation thesis, as I have always wanted to have a thorough study on the topic that I’m interested in. The process of completing the graduation thesis is a priceless journey. It is definitely not an enjoyable and pleasant time.
Indeed, I was constantly nervous and self-conscious all the time. However, I felt so lucky when I was surrounded by supportive friends and family who supported me with unfailing encouragement. Therefore, I must devote this very first page to thanking these dearest people. First and foremost, I would like to express my genuine thankfulness to my supervisor, Mrs.
Pham Thi Thuy Dung, for her invaluable advice and comforting words during the research process. I was so nervous and unconfident about my findings and even sometimes lost in such a large research field, but she always found ways to help me out with her sophisticated knowledge. I am so thankful for her guidance and patience with me during this journey so that the outcome came out successfully. Secondly, I am grateful for all the lecturers I have had the opportunity to study with during 4 years of university.
They have delivered a great deal of invaluable knowledge, which generated the initial idea for this study and then became the fundamental knowledge to bring out such a detailed work. Moreover, I am especially thankful to have such a supportive family with my beloved Dad and Mom, who always have faith in me and support me unconditionally. Additionally, I owe special thanks to my friends Sang and Mei who have always stayed by my side, supported and encouraged me from afar. Furthermore, I would like to give my warm thanks to Cher for her comforting words and Thao Linh for her company during this challenging process.
Finally, I would like to declare my gratitude towards other beloved ones that I cannot name in full. Without their constant support and inspiration, I would not be able to accomplish this precious experience. i LIST OF ABBREVIATION OE Old English ME Middle English e.ME Early Modern English AE American English BE British English a adjective n noun v verb ii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Conceptual framework of the study .10 Table 2: Old English words that vanished .18 Table 3: Old English words that survived .20 Table 4: List of compounds in Beowulf .21 Table 5: Functions of cases in grammatical inflections .23 Table 6: Native words displaced by French vocabulary .27 Table 7: Old English vocabulary came from different foreign sources .29 Table 8: Origins of Middle English vocabulary .37 Table 9: Comparison of personal pronouns in OE and e.43 Table 10: Differences between British and American English vocabulary .49 Table 11: AE words that emerged into BE vocabulary during Modern English period .52 Table 12: English borrowing words from other countries .53 Table 13: List of archaic English, Latin terms and phrases in legal instruments of the International Law Handbook .61 Table 14: Summary of the development of English language and legal English language .65 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. i LIST OF ABBREVIATION.
ii LIST OF TABLES. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .1 Necessity of the study .2 Objectives of research .4 Scope of the study .6 Structure of research .3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Definition of key terms and related literature .1 English language in general and English literature .2 Legal language and legal documents .2 Context and design of the study .13 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 Findings and discussion of results. Historical background of general English language and its corresponding characteristics.
Historical background of legal English language and its corresponding characteristics .3 The implication of acknowledgement of English origin changes on practical English learning process of linguistics students .2 Limitations of the study .3 Recommendations for further study. i APPENDIX I – Geoffrey Chaucer’s Merciless Beauty. i APPENDIX II – Shakespeare’s Macbeth. ii APPENDIX III – John Donne’s The Sun Rising.
iii APPENDIX IV – Robert Burns’ A red, red rose. iv APPENDIX V – Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (Chapter 31: Involves a critical position) .v APPENDIX VI – Magna Carta 1215 – English version of Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School (2008). vi APPENDIX VII – Article 48 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice 1945. vii v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Necessity of the study English has proved satisfactory to all the facets of a lingua franca since a large number of countries, including the world’s largest economies such as the United States, have officially confirmed English as their mother tongue, not to mention that this language has also become the standard language for international commercial and communication for decades.
Besides, when it comes to global integration, the law serves a key role in maintaining world order, leading to the urgent need to learn the language of the law – legal English. The rapid growth of English, and especially legal English, has resulted in the growing demand for a large amount of learning materials which digs into this language to provide its learners with helpful guidance during the learning process. Specifically, legal English has long been a sophisticated field, which causes many troubles for the students who are interested in this very complicated field. During the learning process of legal English, even the learners who have a solid background on the English language might still encounter several difficulties.
For example, it can be seen easily that the implications of the words in legal English totally do not depend on the common senses. Instead, to thoroughly know the use of legal terms in legal documents, the learners must have a great understanding of the archaic words, not only in its recent senses but also in the meanings from the original words dated a long while ago. Nevertheless, most of the recent English learners are ignorant of the past of the language they are learning. This is not troublesome to those who only need a language for daily communication or for dealing with modern commercial transactions, but it creates a significant problem for people with an interest in linguistics, particularly, students who have their majors in linguistic fields.
According to the perspective of a Legal English student, there is a severe shortage found in studying materials introducing the history of the English language and its language of law. Thus, it is an urgency to contribute to the compilation of materials with quality research that can give linguistic students a better understanding and provide those who are in need of an interesting approach to the English language in general and Legal English in particular. 1 There are plenty of approaches to the development of a language, however, one of the most interesting and direct ways to get to know a language is through its literature, in which the language is presented in its most surreal manner. Additionally, the process of collecting illustrative examples by reading literary works then concluding the similarities as well as differences of the topic will be more inspiring and motivated than accessing the history of language by other academic approaches.
By this way, the learning process would be much friendlier and easier for students who have not had a solid base in the linguistics field. Understanding the necessity of this problem, this thesis will conduct an intensive research on the English language development based on its legal background during each period, and bring out a great reference which helps those who are struggling and who have great enthusiasm in the English language and its special subset – legal English.2 Objectives of research According to the previous reasons, this thesis includes several purposes. First of all, this research will provide a compendious history of the English language by the historical background of each period of development. Apparently, this will include the changes in the use of the English language, specifically in its lexicon and grammatical aspects.
In the second place, this thesis will conclude a brief evaluation on the characteristics of legal English with the reference made in the historical events that interfered its development, which will all be clarified by some examples extracted from English legal documents over different periods. Thus, hopefully this essay will become an informative and useful source for other linguistic students and even those who are non-professional but having great interests in linguistics while creating a different and interesting approach to the language they are studying to have general knowledge of the development process of English language.3 Research questions There are two expectations which should be answered after finishing this essay. The first question is “How did English originate and then change throughout the history reflecting in English literature works and legal documents?”. And then the research will help address the question “How does this kind of acknowledgement benefit practical 2 language learning process of linguistic students?”.
Depending on these research questions, the final findings and results of this thesis will be closely attached to the aims of the study, which is to present a short history of the English language and legal English referencing in literature and legal texts written in this language.4 Scope of the study There is a diversity of research carried out on the linguistic fields, however, this thesis will focus on two main categories: one of that is the English language used in the English literature works, and the other is the legalese employed in various legal documents written in English language.5 Methodology Several research methods were used during the writing process to convey persuasive information about the topic. Firstly, the library research will be utilised to examine relevant papers and research to establish their utility, dependability, and authority in relation to the theme of English history. Secondly, a comparative method will be applied after thoroughly researching past studies and articles, comparing the findings to corresponding literature works and legal documents to understand how the English language has changed and how beneficial those changes have been. In addition to the preceding methods, the historical method will be used to depict various historical components in literary works and legal records of England.
The combination of the aforementioned methodology in a reasonable and fluent manner will provide readers of this study with a comprehensive view of the history of English language formation based on the correlation between the development of the language used in literary works and legal documents through each historical period.6 Structure of research This thesis consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 1: Introduction presents general background of the study such as the necessity, the objectives of the study, the research questions to the study and its methodology. The second chapter is Chapter 2: Literature Review, which provides a quick look at previous relevant studies as well as introducing the conceptual framework for this study. Then, the study’s methodology is discussed in Chapter 3: Methodology, which also gives readers a notion of the design and context of the study as well as the research instruments.
The most important part of the study lies 3 in Chapter 4: Results and Discussion, which answers the research questions by findings throughout the researching process. Chapter 5: Conclusion will finish this thesis by giving a summary of the work carried out during the research, and propose some viable suggestions for further research, which may improve the limitations encountered when conducting this study.
