an inquiry into decisive written discourse: persian and english legalese

Discourse analysis has taken much attention in recent decades; however, few studies brought the same genres written in different languages into focus. the current study aimed to compare the various levels or dimensions of discourse in persian and english legalese developed by law practitioners. the qualitative data from persian and english court judgements underwent a manual content analysis to ascertain whether these texts from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds employed the same discourse. the findings revealed that the vocabulary used in each language was quite particular and of restricted meaning. the genre of persian and english legal texts had a standard format, which depended on the specific formalities of each society. formulaic expressions with predetermined structures were common in the english and persian legal texts. the vocabulary was precise, explicit, free of ambiguities and far from that used in ordinary language. arabism was found more in persian legal texts, while latinism was frequent in english legalese. the arabic words in persian legalese were rooted in the iranian religion, i.e. islam. the latin words entered english legal texts when the roman empire dominated europe for hundreds of years. there was no compatibility in the legal systems, culture and history involved in these two legal texts. this investigation can help the researchers, esp and eap teachers, legal text translators and course designers to get a new insight into the similarities and differences of the same genres written in various languages.