The Characteristics of Indonesian Legal Language in Notarial Documents

This study is aimed at finding out the characteristics of Indonesian Legal Language in notarial documents. This study is theoretically based on Cao's theory (2007) in her book entitled “Translating Law”, and supported by Djatmika in his book entitled “Prilaku Bahasa Indonesia, dalam Teks Kontrak”. The data of this study were collected from 6 ( six) legal documents in the form of lease agreement, sale agreement, prenuptial agreement, deed of company establishment, employment agreement and conciliation agreement. From the results and analysis, two (2) characteristics were found in the ILL of notarial documents: (1) general characteristics (boilerplate) and (2) specific characteristics. There are fifteen (15) specific characteristics of ILL found in the notarial documents in this research. The fifteen characteristics consist of eight (8) lexical characteristics and seven (7) syntactical characteristics. The lexical characteristics found in the notarials documents are (a) the use of legal terminologies, (b) the use of repetitive words (tautology), (c) the use of words dan/atau “and/or”, (d) the use of synonymous words, (e) the use of foreign terms, (f) the use of sebagaimana word, (g) the use of the word mana as demontrastrative adjective, and (h)the use of formal address; while the syntactical characteristics consist of (a) the use of long and complex sentences, (b) the use bahwa clause, (c) the use of passive sentences, (d) object fronting, (e) declarative sentence beginning with verb, (f) the use of reference system and (g) pre-supposation.