Texts reflect the conditions under which they are produced. This means that the writing process can favor or counteract a comprehensible text. In this article, problems of law text comprehensibility are related to the legislative writing process. The drafting of three pieces of Swedish consumer legislation was observed at different stages, and the results of this study are summarized and analyzed in relation to rhetorical and sociolinguistic theories of writing. Law writing can roughly be described by a rhetorical model as regards the role of the main phases in the process. It is, however, found to be less reader-oriented and more oriented toward the speech community than the rhetorical model prescribes.
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