Textual‐mapping in British legislative writing

English legislative writing has long been criticised not only for its obscure, circumlocutious and tortuous syntax but also for its extreme linguistic conservatism. Its critics claim that, in spite of numerous governmental and social pressures, the style of legislative drafting has largely remained unchanged. However, some interesting attempts have come from within the drafting community in recent years to make their writing more readable without having to sacrifice their defensive and detailed mode of drafting. This paper examines one such trend to reduce information load at a particular point by making use of what might be called textual‐mapping devices. This helps the draftsman not only to postpone or avoid specification of complicating legal content at a particular point in the legislative provision but also to establish text‐cohering links with the preceding and preceded legislation. This paper presents a corpus‐based detailed analysis of the use of textual‐mapping devices, considering particularly their formal realization and the textual patterns they display in the expression of the legislative statement.