HOW “MODERN” IS THE MODERN PLAIN ENGLISH MOVEMENT? – AN OVERVIEW OF RELEVANT LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE POLICY INITIATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES FROM THE 19TH CENTURY
Abstract
The official beginnings of the modern history of the Plain English movement are usually associated with the 1960s and the 1970s, when federal employees, legal experts and consumer rights advocates started to promote language use more transparent and understandable for the general public. Among the presidents of the United States, it was Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter who issued the first Executive Orders to simplify federal regulations. Although Republican presidents were generally unsupportive of the idea, by 2010 the Plain Writing Act mandated the use of “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use” (P.L. 111-274, Sec. 2). Regardless of the fact that the roots of Plain English may be traced back to Geoffrey Chaucer himself (Cutts, 2013, p. xxvii), pre-20th century official initiatives are barely discussed in the relevant literature. In order to contribute to the filling of this hiatus, the present paper examines the relevant legislative and executive proposals in the U.S. before 1875, arguing that the 1850s and 1860s have been a particularly neglected period in scholarship from the Plain English perspective, although the harbingers of future policies had actually been conceived well before the Civil War.
Keywords: language policy; United States; Plain English; 19th century.
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References
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Woolley, J. & Peters, G. (2020). The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/.
Wydick, R.C. & Sloan, A.E. (2019). Plain English for Lawyers. 6th ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, LLC.
ABA Journal. (1978). “ABA Journal.” Google Books. https://books.google.hu/books?id=uOPLuo4B-4EC&lpg=PA1903&dq="plain english movement"&hl=hu&pg=PA1903#v=onepage&q="plain english movement"&f=false.
An Act to Provide for the Revision and Consolidation of the Statute Laws of the United States. ch.140, 14 Stat. 74. U.S. Statutes at Large 39 (1866): 74-75.
Assy, R. (2011). Can the law speak directly to its subjects? The limitation of Plain Language. Journal of Law and Society 38/3. pp. 376–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00549.x.
Bailey, E.P. (1996). Plain English at Work: a Guide to Writing and Speaking. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bonotti, M. & Chríost, D. Mac G. (2018). Brexit, Language Policy and Linguistic Diversity. Palgrave Pivot.
Clinton, W.J. (1993). “Executive Order 12866—Regulatory Planning and Review.” The American Presidency Project. September 30, 1993. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-12866-regulatory-planning-and-review.
Clinton, W.J. (1996). “Executive Order 12988—Civil Justice Reform.” The American Presidency Project. February 5, 1996. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-12866-regulatory-planning-and-review.
Clinton, W.J. (1998). “Memorandum on Plain Language in Government Writing.” The American Presidency Project. June 1, 1998. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-plain-language-government-writing.
Cowdrey, L. (2013). “Churchill's Call for Brevity.” The National Archives Blog. The National Archives. October 17, 2013. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/churchills-call-for-brevity/.
Cutts, M. (2013). Oxford Guide to Plain English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Czeglédi, S. (2018). Language and the Continental Congress: Language policy issues in the founding documents of the United States from 1774 to 1789. HJEAS--Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 24(1), pp. 113–37.
Daugherty, G. (2018). “Teddy Roosevelt's Bold (But Doomed) Battle to Change American Spelling.” History.com. A&E Television Networks. March 9, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/theodore-roosevelt-spelling-controversy.
Donald, D.H. (2009). Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
Felker, D.B. (1981). Guidelines for Document Designers. Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research.
Felsenfeld, C. & Siegel, A. (1978). Simplified Consumer Credit Forms. Boston, MA: Warren, Gorham & Lamont.
Felsenfeld, C. (1981). The Plain English Movement in the United States. Canadian Business Law Journal 6. pp. 408–21. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1475&context=faculty_scholarship.
Fillmore, M. (1851). “Second Annual Message.” The American Presidency Project. December 20, 1851. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-7.
“Google Ngram Viewer.” n.d. Google Books. Google. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Plain+English+Movement&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1960&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4;,Plain English Movement;,c0;,s0;;plain English movement;,c0;;Plain English Movement;,c0;;Plain English movement;,c0.
“History and Timeline.” n.d. Plainlanguage.gov. Accessed January 23, 2020. https://plainlanguage.gov/about/history/.
“House Journal.” The Library of Congress: American Memory Collection. Last modified May 1, 2003. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwhj.html.
Kerr, K.T. (2014). “A Study of the Plain Writing Act of 2010: Federal Agency, Writer, and User Appropriations of U.S. Plain Language Policy.” PhD Dissertation. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/50426/Kerr_KT_D_2014.pdf?sequence=1.
Linares, O., Daly, D. & Daly, G. (2017). Plain English for Doctors and Other Medical Scientists. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lincoln, A. (1861). “First Annual Message.” The American Presidency Project. December 3, 1861. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-9.
Martin, D. (2000). “David Mellinkoff, 85, Enemy of Legalese.” The New York Times, January 16, 2000, 37.
Nixon, R.M. (1969). “Special Message to the Congress on Consumer Protection.” The American Presidency Project. October 30, 1969. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-consumer-protection-0.
Nixon, R.M. (1971). “Executive Order 11583—Office of Consumer Affairs.” The American Presidency Project. February 24, 1971. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-11583-office-consumer-affairs.
Obama, B.H. (2011). “Executive Order 13563—Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review.” The American Presidency Project. January 18, 2011. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-13563-improving-regulation-and-regulatory-review.
O’Hayre, J. (1966). Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of Land Management. https://archive.org/details/gobbledygookhasg3836ohay.
Pierce, E.L. & Sumner, Ch. (1893). Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner. Vol. 3. Boston: Robert Bros. Hathi Trust Digital Library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006255525.
“Plainlanguage.gov.” n.d. Plainlanguage.gov. Accessed January 15, 2020. https://www.plainlanguage.gov/.
Public Law 111–274. Oct. 13, 2010. 124 Stat. 2861. Government Publishing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ274/pdf/PLAW-111publ274.pdf.
“Ralph Nader and the Consumer Movement.” (2019). Digital History. Accessed January 22, 2020. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3351.
“Senate Journal.” The Library of Congress: American Memory Collection. Last modified May 1, 2003. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsj.html.
Shapiro, B.J. (1969). Law and science in seventeenth-century England. Stanford Law Review 21(4). pp. 727–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/1227566.
Shapiro, B.J. (1975). Law reform in seventeenth century England. The American Journal of Legal History 19(4), pp. 280–312. https://doi.org/10.2307/845054.
Stamp, J. (2013). Benjamin Franklin’s phonetic alphabet. Smithsonian Magazine, May 10, 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/benjamin-franklins-phonetic-alphabet-58078802/.
Stockmeyer, N.O. (2019). “History.” Scribes. The American Society of Legal Writers. 2019. https://www.scribes.org/history.
Sumner, Ch. & Hoar, G.F. (1900). Charles Sumner, His Complete Works: with Introduction by Hon. George Frisbie Hoar. Vol. 8. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Hathi Trust Digital Library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000407161.
The English Journal. (1978). https://books.google.hu/books?id=nptiAAAAMAAJ.
The Scrivener. (1975). https://books.google.hu/books?id=A-86AQAAIAAJ.
Tiersma, P.M. (2015). On the origins of Legal English. In Solan, L.M., Ainsworth, J. & Shuy, R.W. (eds.) Speaking of Language and the Law: Conversations on the Work of Peter Tiersma. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 3-11.
“Warranty Laws and the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.” 2016. Findlaw. June 21, 2016. https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/warranty-laws-and-the-magnuson-moss-warranty-act-.html.
Williams, Ch. (2004). Legal English and Plain Language: an introduction. ESP Across Cultures 1. pp. 111–124. https://edipuglia.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ESP_1_2004.pdf.
Winston, A. (2015). “The Revised Statutes of the United States: Predecessor to the U.S. Code.” Law Library (blog). Library of Congress. July 2, 2015. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/07/the-revised-statutes-of-the-united-states-predecessor-to-the-u-s-code/.
Woolley, J. & Peters, G. (2020). The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/.
Wydick, R.C. & Sloan, A.E. (2019). Plain English for Lawyers. 6th ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, LLC.
Published
2021-12-19
How to Cite
Czeglédi, S. (2021). HOW “MODERN” IS THE MODERN PLAIN ENGLISH MOVEMENT? – AN OVERVIEW OF RELEVANT LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE POLICY INITIATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES FROM THE 19TH CENTURY. PALIMPSEST / ПАЛИМПСЕСТ, 6(12), 47-60. https://doi.org/10.46763/PALIM21612047c
Section
ЈАЗИК / LANGUAGE
