Pluricentric legal Chinese

Abstract

Chinese is the language of legislation and of court and administrative procedures in several jurisdictions as well as in numerous international organizations. Its legal status differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and displays its pluricentric character. Legal acts that are issued in these jurisdictions demonstrate therefore different levels of terminological formation and other legal-linguistically relevant varieties. It is the task of legal lexicography to register lexical varieties of legal Chinese in the relevant jurisdictions. However, in addition to all lexicological and lexicographical efforts, the question could be asked whether terminological harmonization constitutes the appropriate answer to problems caused by pluricentric Chinese legal terminology. It could be claimed that the task of legal linguists is not only to research but also to shape the Chinese legal language. There exist, in fact, examples of such activities that will be closely scrutinized in this article.