BECOMING (FALSE) FRIENDS: LINGUISTIC PRACTICES AND SOURCE ACCESS IN MALTA

The linguistic practices of the semiotic groups engaged in legal education, courtroom litigation or public administration in Malta seem to point to a trajectory where the mixity of Malta’s legal system is quickly being renegotiated and reconfigured. This may be difficult to appreciate at first because, on the surface, the linguistic arrangement remains unchanged, just as the morphology of the words remains unaltered. Under the surface, however, English is exercising a firm and persistent traction on the meanings of Maltese words with Italianate morphology that has the potential to affect access to the legal sources of Malta’s civil law heritage. New (false) friends can thus become useful tools to identify changes in the source languages which ultimately lead to deep, systemic changes, particularly meaningful in mixed jurisdictions as they can enhance or deprive access to the legal sources of a legal tradition.