Forensic Linguistics: A Forensic Stylistic Analysis of Legalese of Banking Courts in Pakistan

Abstract

Language of law is a register. Register used in banking courts has its own features. This study highlights the stylistic features of the legalese in Pakistan. Forensic linguistics helps to understand language used in legal contexts .Population of the study is legalese of banks but it is delimited to the banking case judgments, writ petitions and criminal appeals as the sample. Data has been collected from online websites of banking courts. Corpus linguistics is used as research methodology. Data analysis is done with Antconc software version 3.5.8for windows. Theoretical background is Leech and Short model (1981).The findings show complexity and an unusual usage of grammatical categories. This complexity leads to the problem of incomprehensibility and fraudulent practices. This can be simplified to help the users. A forensic linguist can provide assistance to the professionals. The pedagogical solution of this problem is need of the hour for the public at large.