Meaning and Power in the Language of Law

Meaning and Power in the Language of Law PDF Author: Janny H. C. Leung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107112842
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A new perspective on how far law's power derives from socially situated communication rather than from abstract rules.

Meaning and Power in the Language of Law

Meaning and Power in the Language of Law PDF Author: Janny H. C. Leung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107112842
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A new perspective on how far law's power derives from socially situated communication rather than from abstract rules.

The Language of Judges

The Language of Judges PDF Author: Lawrence M. Solan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226767892
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Since many legal disputes are battles over the meaning of a statute, contract, testimony, or the Constitution, judges must interpret language in order to decide why one proposed meaning overrides another. And in making their decisions about meaning appear authoritative and fair, judges often write about the nature of linguistic interpretation. In the first book to examine the linguistic analysis of law, Lawrence M. Solan shows that judges sometimes inaccurately portray the way we use language, creating inconsistencies in their decisions and threatening the fairness of the judicial system. Solan uses a wealth of examples to illustrate the way linguistics enters the process of judicial decision making: a death penalty case that the Supreme Court decided by analyzing the use of adjectives in a jury instruction; criminal cases whose outcomes depend on the Supreme Court's analysis of the relationship between adverbs and prepositional phrases; and cases focused on the meaning of certain words in the Constitution. Solan finds that judges often describe our use of language poorly because there is no clear relationship between the principles of linguistics and the jurisprudential goals that the judge wishes to promote. A major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on law and its social and cultural context, Solan's lucid, engaging book is equally accessible to linguists, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, literary theorists, and political scientists.

The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law

The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law PDF Author: Peter Meijes Tiersma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199572127
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
This book provides a state-of-the-art account of past and current research in the interface between linguistics and law. It outlines the range of legal areas in which linguistics plays an increasing role and describes the tools and approaches used by linguists and lawyers in this vibrant new field. Through a combination of overview chapters, case studies, and theoretical descriptions, the volume addresses areas such as the history and structure of legal languages, its meaning and interpretation, multilingualism and language rights, courtroom discourse, forensic identification, intellectual property and linguistics, and legal translation and interpretation. Encyclopedic in scope, the handbook includes chapters written by experts from every continent who are familiar with linguistic issues that arise in diverse legal systems, including both civil and common law jurisdictions, mixed systems like that of China, and the emerging law of the European Union.

Language, Meaning and the Law

Language, Meaning and the Law PDF Author: Christopher Hutton
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748633529
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Language, Meaning and the Law offers an accessible, critical guide to debates about linguistic meaning and interpretation in relation to legal language. Law is an ideal domain for considering fundamental questions relating to how we assign meanings to words, understand and comment on texts, and deal with socially and ideologically significant questions of interpretation. The book argues that theoretical issues of concern to linguists, philosophers, literary theorists and others are illuminated by the demands of the legal context, since law is driven by the need for practical solutions and for determinate outcomes based on explicit reasoning. Topics covered include: the relationship of linguistics to legal theory, indeterminacy and statutory interpretation, the theory and practice of using dictionaries in law, defamation and language in the public sphere, and the distinction between perjury and deception. This book does not assume specialist knowledge of the field, and is designed as a self-contained, advanced introduction to a fascinating area of study. The reader will gain an overall insight into issues and debates about meaning and interpretation, as well as an understanding of how these questions are shaped by the legal context.

Legal Meanings

Legal Meanings PDF Author: Janet Giltrow
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110721007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
This collection is about how law makes meaning and how meaning makes law. Through clear methodology and substantial findings, chapters expose the deficits of ‘literal’ meaning and the difficulties in 'ordinary' meaning, in international legal contexts and in more immediate social ones, as well as in courtrooms. Further, chapters in this volume see the challenges to national and international commitments to all speakers sharing a common meaning.

Just Words

Just Words PDF Author: John M. Conley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022648453X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Is it “just words” when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it “just words” when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, Just Words focuses on what has become the central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power. John M. Conley, William M. O'Barr, and Robin Conley Riner show how the microdynamics of the legal process and the largest questions of justice can be fruitfully explored through the field of linguistics. Each chapter covers a language-based approach to a different area of the law, from the cross-examinations of victims and witnesses to the inequities of divorce mediation. Combining analysis of common legal events with a broad range of scholarship on language and law, Just Words seeks the reality of power in the everyday practice and application of the law. As the only study of its type, the book is the definitive treatment of the topic and will be welcomed by students and specialists alike. This third edition brings this essential text up to date with new chapters on nonverbal, or “multimodal,” communication in legal settings and law, language, and race.

When Words Lose Their Meaning

When Words Lose Their Meaning PDF Author: James Boyd White
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022605604X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Through fresh readings of texts ranging from Homer's Iliad, Swift's Tale of a Tub, and Austen's Emma through the United States Constitution and McCulloch v. Maryland, James Boyd White examines the relationship between an individual mind and its language and culture as well as the "textual community" established between writer and audience. These striking textual analyses develop a rhetoric—a "way of reading" that can be brought to any text but that, in broader terms, becomes a way of learning that can shape the reader's life. "In this ambitious and demanding work of literary criticism, James Boyd White seeks to communicate 'a sense of reading in a new and different way.' . . . [White's] marriage of lawyerly acumen and classically trained literary sensibility—equally evident in his earlier work, The Legal Imagination—gives the best parts of When Words Lose Their Meaning a gravity and moral earnestness rare in the pages of contemporary literary criticism."—Roger Kimball, American Scholar "James Boyd White makes a state-of-the-art attempt to enrich legal theory with the insights of modern literary theory. Of its kind, it is a singular and standout achievement. . . . [White's] selections span the whole range of legal, literary, and political offerings, and his writing evidences a sustained and intimate experience with these texts. Writing with natural elegance, White manages to be insightful and inciteful. Throughout, his timely book is energized by an urgent love of literature and law and their liberating potential. His passion and sincerity are palpable."—Allan C. Hutchinson, Yale Law Journal "Undeniably a unique and significant work. . . . When Words Lose Their Meaning is a rewarding book by a distinguished legal scholar. It is a showcase for the most interesting sort of inter-disciplinary work: the kind that brings together from traditionally separate fields not so much information as ideas and approaches."—R. B. Kershner, Jr., Georgia Review

The Language of Statutes

The Language of Statutes PDF Author: Lawrence Solan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226767965
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
We are capable of writing crisp yet flexible laws, but Solan explains that difficult cases result when the ways in which our cognitive and linguistic faculties are structured fail to produce a single, clear interpretation. Though we are predisposed to absorb new situations into categories we have previously formed, our conceptualization is not always as crisp as the legislative and judicial realms demand. In such cases, Solan contends that other values, most importantly legislative intent, must come into play. The Language of Statutes provides an excellent introduction to statutory interpretation, rejecting the extreme arguments that judges have either too much or too little leeway, and explaining how and why a certain number of interpretive problems are simply inevitable. --Book Jacket.

Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning

Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning PDF Author: Anne Wagner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402053207
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The study of legal semiotics emphasizes the contingency and fluidity of legal concepts and stresses the existence of overlapping, competing and coexisting legal discourses. New problems, changing power structures and societal norms and new faces of injustice – all these force reconsideration, reformulation and even replacement of established doctrines. This book focuses on the application of law in a wide variety of contexts, including international politics and diplomatic practice.

Lawyers Making Meaning

Lawyers Making Meaning PDF Author: Jan M. Broekman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400754582
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book present a structure for understanding and exploring the semiotic character of law and law systems. Cultivating a deep understanding for the ways in which lawyers make meaning—the way in which they help make the world and are made, in turn by the world they create —can provide a basis for consciously engaging in the work of the law and in the production of meaning. The book first introduces the reader to the idea of semiotics in general and legal semiotics in particular, as well as to the major actors and shapers of the field, and to the heart of the matter: signs. The second part studies the development of the strains of thinking that together now define semiotics, with attention being paid to the pragmatics, psychology and language of legal semiotics. A third part examines the link between legal theory and semiotics, the practice of law, the critical legal studies movement in the USA, the semiotics of politics and structuralism. The last part of the book ties the different strands of legal semiotics together, and closely looks at semiotics in the lawyer’s toolkit—such as: text, name and meaning. ​