The language of two South African Constitutions

One of my two theses is now finally ready, and given that I am satisfied with the results, I thought I should share it. It was a comparison of two South African constitutions (the 1961 and the current 1996 one), to see if the freer society has manifested itself in a more accessible legal text, which I showed it did. This was not only the result of modernization, but a conscious effort on the part of the drafters.

Here's the abstract, and if you are interested, you can read the whole thing here.

This study examined in detail the language of two South African constitutions. The Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, 1961 adopted in the era of apartheid was compared with the current constitution, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, to find out whether the democratization of society has resulted in a more accessible constitution. 

Based on the recommendations of the Plain Language Movement for more accessible legal language, four criteria were examined in a quantitative analysis: average sentence length, the use of passive verb forms, the use of „shall‟ and the use of archaic and Latin expressions. 

The results showed that the 1996 Constitution compared to the 1961 Constitution has significantly shorter average sentences; passive constructions are half as frequent; the use of „shall‟ and difficult, archaic and Latin expressions are avoided. The results indicate that the language of the 1996 Constitution conforms better to the recommendations on accessible language. In conclusion, the democratization of society has been accompanied by a constitution that is easier to comprehend and understand, allowing the citizens to understand their rights and obligations towards the state better.

The Chaos

I am studying for my English phonology exam and I wanted to share what I'm going through, so here's a poem by Gerald Nolst Trenité (IPA version; one of the many video adaptations).

Deeper explorations of international law

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I have to come up with a plan and the first chapter for my thesis on peremptory norms (jus cogens) in international law and I am  considering participating in a competition that touches upon State immunity, diplomatic immunity of Heads of States and probably the right to self-defense. 
Consequently, I had to immerse myself very deeply in details of international law and there are some very interesting facets.

It seems that one has to be quite the magician to traverse this field where one and the same court case can be used in arguments both pro and contra and where practice doesn't seem to follow theory, yet we are assured that practice is at fault. I believe this is one of the reasons why there is so much academic activity surrounding it, thought it is not totally without interest to non-experts.

In my explorations I have stumbled upon two very interesting blogs that reflect on  current issues (such as the current Falklands dispute, the US drone attacks or the alleged Mossad hit in Dubai) and their implications in international law. Both the blog of the European Journal of International Law, EJIL: Talk! and Opinio Juris  write in an accessible language and present interesting arguments from leading scholars in the field.

The language of bees

It has been almost a month I study English at ELTE, so far I enjoy it, although my past few weeks were a quite tiring, as I attended almost every class there was.

I mostly have seminars and a few lectures, which I cannot really attend as they are either early in the morning or conflict with my other major.

I have a lecture on Linguistics by Nádasdy Ádám, who is quite famous here in Hungary, but unfortunately it's in conflict with an other lecture. There is a corresponding seminar which I believe is quite good, the teacher tries to explain all the complicated terms as well as she can. The associated books, both the English one and the Hungarian one is quite readably, with good examples: I consider myself an expert on the topic of how bees communicate the location of food to their hive.

An other lecture and seminar pair is Academic writing, nothing really exciting there.

I would have a lecture on Introduction to literature, but the teacher's secretary always cancels it on the day of the lecture,  just about 3 hours before it should start, to make sure that nobody gets the message. It will be interesting if she demands that we know everything she was supposed to teach, but did not, just because she did not feel like it (and did not bother to send in a substitute).
On the corresponding seminar, which should "follow the lectures" almost everybody is analysing poems and other texts, we are tasked to decipher long studies on the theory and history of literary criticism.

I don't usually attend the lecture on English-American political culture, as the lecture hall has a capacity of about 50-100 people less than the number of students taking the course. There are not enough seats, its impossible to hear or see the professor, who is hard to understand even if one is close enough to hear him. The recommended reading consists of books that either cost a hundred bucks or has not been printed in the last four decades. Anyways I am hoping to learn it from somebody's borrowed notes, as I am a bit familiar with the topic from my previous studies and interests.

I have a class on British Civilisation at the other university, but mentally I count it towards my English studies. This lecture just makes me angry, as although there is always some interesting tidbit that can be learned, the professor is spreading misinformation, which is most annoying.

And last but not least I have general language practice twice a week which I enjoy so far the most.

Busy, busy, busy

This Bokononist phrase best describes my last week. I arrived home from Germany at about midnight on Sunday (my Germanwings flight was delayed about 20 minutes and as a nice courtesy upon landing everybody got a bottle of ice tea as a present).
Almost all week school started at 8 o'clock in the morning, and its getting to be too much: I decided to skip any class that starts too early. Even using such arbitrary measures to decide which lectures to attend I still am in school at least till five in the afternoon.
The point behind all this self-pitying is that after so many tiring days I don't have neither time nor opportunity to jot down my ideas that I consider more worthy of this blog, such as my anger at ELTE (my new university) for not informing me of a deadline for a scholarship I would have received or some parallel I drew between the topic of media freedom and my weekend in Germany while on the metro. These pieces would not have been Kubla Khans in literary quality but still, they are lost for ever.

Next semester subjects

The time has come again to chose the subjects for the next semester. As usual the servers of my school went down minutes before the system should have been opened. Its 3.5 hours later and finally I could apply for my classes, and though barely, but I could even squeeze in to some optional courses.

This is a frustrating period, as chance decides who can actually log in to the system and chose the subjects/exams he wants and who has to live on what's left. Even if one gets in to add to the frustration one has to face that the system is quite badly written.

Anyways, it seems next year I will be having a lot of lectures on the subjects of

• security policy
• international economy
• British civilisation
• international law
• history (again...)

and others. I hope I can manage the workload as I have applied to study in a second university as well.