Interpersonality in legislative drafting guides and manuals: the case of the Scottish Government publication Plain Language and Legislation

My aim in this chapter is to analyse how interpersonality, i.e. the way the writers project themselves and their audience in the discourse, plays a role in the way legislative drafting guides and manuals are written. Within the realm of legal discourse, legislative drafting guides and manuals constitute a subgenre of their own. For the purposes of this chapter I distinguish between ‘legislative drafting manuals’, which tend to be exhaustive in covering a wide range of points in considerable detail, and ‘legislative drafting guides’ which tend to be shorter in length and are not usually meant to be as exhaustive in scope. I go on to explore the questions of authorship and of readership in relation to legal drafting guides and manuals. I then examine the interpersonal features to be found in the online booklet 'Plain Language and Legislation' published by the Scottish Government in 2006.