British and American Varieties in Legalese

Jana Spalova, Slovakia, ID CLEaR2016-341;       Briticisms and Americanisms have been described by many linguists. However, British and American varieties in legalese (in legal language) have not been elaborated yet. There are many discrepances not only in spelling, pronunciation but also on a lexical level - e.g. the word bailiff in British English means an officer of the sheriff who makes arrests and serves writs but in American English it means a court officer who keeps order during court proceedings. The Czech, Slovak and English legal dictionaries do not provide the British or American equivalents. Even, in famous Black` s Law Dictionary these ones cannot be distinguished - they are sometimes provided as legal synonyms, what can be miscellaneous. The author tries to provide the list of both varieties in legalese based on the research of English legal textbooks and tries to analyse them.

Key words: variety, legalese, Briticisms, Americanisms, legal synonyms