Lexical Complexity in US Statutes

Statutory language in English is difficult for the average person to understand. Although the plain language movement has gained momentum, the US federal government has been slow to change guidelines for writing statutes, resulting in linguistically complex language. This complexity is potentially problematic if residents cannot understand the laws by which they are bound. The present study aims to evaluate the lexical complexity of federal statues compared with three registers of American English. Examining lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, and lexical density, this study determines that statutory language is far more lexically sophisticated and nominally dense and is far less lexically diverse and content word dense than television/movie subtitles, news articles, and even academic journal articles. These results indicate that statutory language is lexically distinctive and complex in specific ways, which provides additional insight into why legal language may be difficult to comprehend. Suggestions are made about how statutory language might be simplified.