The Investigation

This chapter clarifies the scope and purpose of the investigations carried out in this book. To this aim, it outlines the existing gap in the literature and the ways to fill it. Chapter 2 introduced the relevance and complexity of formulae in legal language. Despite their importance, however, they have been scatteredly addressed in the literature. There seems to be little conceptual academic work dealing with legal lexical phrases, and, more particularly, with their translations (or equivalents) in different languages. This chapter clarifies the reasons why this book is dedicated to an in-depth analysis of “neutral” or “general” legal formulae in English, Italian and French. In particular, the neutral formulae are examined and compared across the following domains and settings: online terms of service, national and EU legislation on consumer contracts, and national and European parliamentary debates. This chapter explains the reasons why these domains are chosen.