CHAPTER SEVEN
A COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS APPROACH
TO PLAIN LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
OF AMERICAN DIVORCE LAW
CHARLES R. DYER
Introduction
The following chapter is based on personal observations and research done
by the author in the function of a consultant to court systems which are
intended to serve litigants who come to court without legal representation.
My intent is both to share my observations in hopes that they may
contribute to the body of knowledge about specialist languages and to
interest cognitive linguists to consider research in the problems of
American law. I serve on the Research Working Group of the Self
Represented Litigation Network and am very familiar with the work of
American courts in conducting their own research. As would of necessity
be the case, most court research is conducted in order to improve systems
and services in the context of the courts’ mission. Research for pure basic
scientific reasons is not the intent. Thus, most such research is primarily
evidence-based business model research, with little consideration except
as can be obtained easily (and cheaply) for the underlying scientific basis
for those outcomes that help achieve the mission. Expensive, time-
consuming scientific research on small chunks of the total enterprise do
not get funded. Rather, the emphasis is on larger scale research wherein
the variables are too complex to enable competent scientific theorizing.
Ideas are tried and then tested with small field studies, with little concern
for underlying causes or scientific hypotheses.
However, the total court research system has reached a significant
roadblock. Continued advances in the business systems that support
American courts require a much better understanding of the cognitive
aspects of the work than is presently attainable from current court
research. Anomalies arise from the current research that are not easily