Chapter Seven
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begin research in law as a specialist language and perhaps seek National
Science Foundation funding and court cooperation.^2
Opening Remarks
A cognitive linguistics approach to the study of the specialist language of
American divorce law must start with grasping an understanding of an
underlying conundrum. In one sense, the purpose of law is to arrange
concepts into an ontology that enables decision making from large
principles onto specific instances of dispute. Divorce law, however, is
about the re-establishment of a long-term relationship, not the one-time
decision of who is liable, as would be the case in a contract or tort dispute.
The state becomes a third party in this relationship, as it must determine
whether the court’s orders are adhered to properly over time. To put it
quaintly, American divorce law imposes dictionary definitions on
encyclopedic-historic situations.
In order to create this ontology, over time American courts have
systematized the concepts that have emerged through the years from both
legislation and judicial decisions. Although the United States is a common
law country, divorce law begins with legislation. Decisions of appellate
courts on divorce matters are meant to add clarity to the interpretations of
the legislation. Only rarely do the courts extend the law beyond legislative
reach. Such cases as the palimony cases in California are an anomaly.
However, since divorce law is so important, state legislatures often pass
new laws that then require further interpretation. The field thus becomes
quite complex, and, as would be expected, has developed a specialist
language. Since there are fifty states and several districts and territories,
one might say that there is a specialist language with fifty-plus dialects.
For many years, American attorneys have used forms as the core of the
documents they file in law cases. These forms were initially created
externally by third parties as examples of the needed documents, usually
with fill-in-the-blank spaces for entering the physical and historical details
of the case. Over time, the courts began to depend on forms so much that
many courts have made them mandatory for filing lawsuits, or have made
(^2) Although corpora from trial cases (both completed forms and trail transcripts) in
the United States can be easily obtained with court cooperation, no cognitive
linguist has sought to do so. The courts do not set up the corpora for research
purposes as that would cost money, but a well-funded research program could
easily manage that. The need is for someone to have a reason to do it. We do not
even have a corpus of unfilled court forms, which could easily be created from
internet resources.