Linguistic Exploitations in T&C/T and S Apply: A Matter in the Digital Age

Abstract

The study considers the ‘Terms and Conditions (T & Cs) Apply’ as a data for the study. The main objective is to highlight the linguistic exploitation inherent in the document also known as ‘Terms of Services’ (T & Ss). T & Cs Apply is a legal agreement between a service provider and the person who requests for the service, of which the recipient must agree by abiding by the Terms of Services in order to use the offered service(s).  The study takes into cognizance a qualitative approach and a random data sampling of ‘T & Cs/T & Ss Apply’ of the following institutions: banks, online businesses and network service providers. Twenty of T&Cs Apply documents of banks, some online businesses and some networks providers were sampled from online between June 2022-2023 January. They were downloaded, screenshot (where they could not be downloaded) and were scanned through to ascertain their features. The pragmatic concept used to account for the data is the ‘Cooperative Principle’ (CP). All the maxims were used to account for the data. The following findings were revealed: linguistic verbosity, linguistic falsity, linguistic ambiguity, and linguistic irrelevance. The study concludes that there are breakdowns of the maxims. The breakdown of the maxims transcends impositions on the users’ right and infringement of their human rights. The study recommends that the cyberspace is another space for human existence in the 21^st century, where many human engagements take place; therefore, all legal documents need to be properly disseminated. The study calls for simplicity of language use.