This paper sets a clear interdisciplinary boundary of the joint work between the Theory of Law and Jurilinguistics , surrounding the role of legal language . The paper attempts to contemplate the challenges of the globalization of Law in the 21st century, and launches the challenge of the formation of a common place , to be established by political language and legal language , in order to favour the procedural and gradual development of Global Law . Thus, today, in the period of transition between international law and cosmopolitan law , the regulation of global life increasingly demanding of translation professionals. For this reason, when practising legal translation , their contribution is not limited to the transition from language a quo to language ad quem, but to the construction of classes that form a tertium , and it is from this residue of translation processes that it starts to open itself to the possibility of a legal expertise common to everybody starts to open up. Jurilinguistics has the task of collating and systemising these practices, to contribute to the Theory of Law , towards achieving the new scale of the project of modernity, that is, the formation of transnational justice .

December 7, 2020

Border troubles. Some uncertainties of legal transfer

Claudius Messner

Page range: 151-183

Abstract

Issues of production, translation and transformation of texts are explored in the light of the differences between modern Western legal thought and Chinese views of legal rationality. Contemporary Chinese culture is often viewed with suspicion. On the one hand, Chinese thinking is mistrusted as influenced by the Confucian world view regarded as deeply irrational. On the other hand, China’s economical practises are often suspected of mere reproducing and copying. This paper is concerned neither with alleged or factual deficiencies of China’s legal rationality nor with violations of “intellectual property” or other rights or the governmental policies of the People’s Republic of China. My interest is the fact that accusation and concern for the Chinese practises of creation and transformation by copying and cloning seem to hit the nerve of Western modernity’s cult of authenticity. The very problem, the paper suggests, is our modern relation to the other and to the others. I will argue this in three steps: the first part starts from a discussion of ‘shanzhai’, the Chinese neologism pointing to alternative ways of production, before analysing the Western scandalization of plagiarism; drawing upon studies from various disciplines, specific aspects of writing and scripture, such as the the differentiation between real text and fiction, the idea of authentic speaking and the distinction between textual and functional equivalents, are explored. The second part is first about the role of truth and truthfulness in modern Western art and philosophy, then about the interpenetration of wisdom and cunning in ancient Greek and Chinese thought. The final part addresses the relation of reasonable knowledge and instrumental rationality in legal thinking. The Chinese notion of ‘quan’, law, is described as a jurisgenetic path of law. Against this background, open questions associated with legal “transplants” come to the fore.

December 7, 2020

Otherness, elsewhere, and the 'Ecology' of law's implications: The semiotic oceans surrounding legal signification and its discriminatory exteriority/objectivity

Mario Ricca

Page range: 185-237

Abstract

Modern legal systems’ efficacy and self-consistency rely upon semantic/cultural conditions that they do not engender and are unable to maintain without resorting to the cognitive provisions gushing out from freedom—this is the preliminary assumption of this essay. Some factors play a generative role in this direction. The cornerstone of legal modernity is the ‘exteriority’ of law. This means that legal qualifications have to draw from the morphological appearances of human behaviors and relate to only their empirical/factual signification and consequences. The domain of intentions, the internal forum, is out of law’s cognitive reach. The whole grammar of modern liberties is somehow imbued with the idea that freedom can exist only insofar as a ‘zone’ of behavioral autonomy is granted by means of objectively determined rights and duties. The formal features of these rights and their pragmatic implications cannot therefore be opined just because their exterior significance allegedly assures a shelter for individual freedom. In a sense, freedom is considered as an epiphenomenon of the protection afforded by the past reification of rights. The ensuing silent assumption is that should freedom redefine the content and the objective behavioral implementations of those rights, it would annihilate itself. What this approach overwrites, however, is that the morphological appearances of gestures and things stem from cultural and inter-subjective-discursive activities—a kind of semantic social contract—that can never be considered accomplished once and for all. This is because the very molding of the shapes and features of morphological appearances implies that freedom, viz. a non-indifferent differing is at work. But freedom, in turn, is a ‘phenomenon’ the origin of which dwells in the individuals’ internal forum, their own experiences, including their mnestic environment and the semiotic crossroads that constitute their minds. Nevertheless, legal terminological apparatuses—as shown above—are treated/used as systems of signs that encapsulate a semantic discontinuity in their legitimacy, a setback in the definition not only of what it is to be, but also the factual dimension to which legal categorizations implicitly refer. This discontinuity is often passed off as an objectivity normatively granted and absorbed by legal language that includes not only the meanings of what ‘ought to be’ but—silently—even of what ‘is.’ The exteriority of modern law and the objectivity of the related morphological assumption make up, therefore, the lexicon of ‘an’ equality somehow immunized against freedom and its semantic-political differentiating significance. The equality of differences before the law, but not inside the law, is the Kafkian liberticidal and mystifying outcome of the above Cartesian-fashioned misuse of law’s mythologized exteriority/objectivity and the epistemological sleight of hand for which such a binomial paves the way. The paper will analyze the extent to which the self-evidence bestowed upon morphological features encapsulated in official legal discourse epitomizes semiotic ideological assumptions and eases their instrumental/discriminatory use. Moreover, the normative and partisan misuses of the ‘cognitive’ will be explored to bring to the surface its function in the obscuring of the semio-ecological surroundings of human conduct and the resulting impairment of the relevance of ‘Otherness’ and ‘Elsewhere’ (including chronological remoteness) in the semantic construction of legal cases. Ultimately, the paper will examine how law’s exteriority—namely, an objective exteriority of facts and the related meanings under its lens—is often transformed into a (pseudo) cognitive instrument of power employed to deny freedom its constitutional-democratic role as an unremitting source of law.

December 7, 2020

Law as a culturally constituted sign-system – A space for interpretation

Wagner Anne, Aleksandra Matulewska, Le Cheng

Page range: 239-267

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to discuss legal language systems as culturally constituted sign-systems that are continuously evolving in time and space. To understand messages formulated in legal languages, one needs to realize that law is culture-bound, which in turn means that law reflects society’s mentality, tolerance, knowledge, social perceptions, etc. At the same time, law is a living reality impacted by various global phenomena and other legal systems. Therefore, this legal reality has “divergent potentialities” (Hasegawa, Ko. 2016. “A glance at the dynamics of ‘confluence’ in a legal system – notes on H. Patrick Glenn’s insights concerning Legal Traditions of the World ”. In Transnational Legal Theory . Vol. 7/1: 1–8, 3), which enable it to develop in various directions depending on wider social, political and technological contexts. Additionally, when communicating law interlingually and intralingually, one needs to take into account the knowledge of senders and recipients since the degree of commensurability of law depends on the uniformity of interpretation on meanings. When discussing the issues of sign meaning interpretation, the authors will focus on non-decomposable units and fuzzy units. The meaning of such terms is subject to interpretation through the prism of tacit knowledge. Therefore, the interpretation of any culturally constituted sign-system is burdened with some loss of information and meaning deficiency.

December 7, 2020

Linguistic norm in legal language and legislative language – The issue of codification

Marta Andruszkiewicz

Page range: 269-283

Abstract

This article analyses the linguistic norms found within legal and legislative language and their implementation. It attempts to answer the following questions: is there a common scope for the use of linguistic norms in general language and legislative language, what can form the basis for resolving issues of correctness in legal and legislative language and is a codification of the linguistic norms for legislative language necessary? The discrepancies observed between normative standards and linguistic practise raise the issue of the need to codify linguistic norms within legal and legislative language. In this article, I hypothesise the need to elaborate a source for codifying the norms of legal and legislative language.

Open Access December 7, 2020

Cultural, textual and linguistic aspects of legal translation: A model of text analysis for training legal translators

Guadalupe Soriano Barabino

Page range: 285-300

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Abstract

Legal translation training involves the acquisition and development of a set of sub-competences that constitute legal translation competence (Cao, Deborah. 2007. Translating law . Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; Prieto Ramos, Fernando. 2011. Developing legal translation competence: An integrative process-oriented approach. Comparative Legilinguistics. International Journal for Legal Communications 5. 7–21; Piecychna, Beata. 2013. Legal translation competence in the light of translational hermeneutics. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 34(47). 141–159; Soriano Barabino, Guadalupe. 2016. Comparative law for legal translators . Oxford: Peter Lang; Soriano Barabino, Guadalupe. 2018. La formación del traductor jurídico: Análisis de la competencia traductora en traducción jurídica y propuesta de programa formativo. Quaderns: Revista de Traduccio 25. 217–229). The development of those sub-competences is part of a complex process where students are faced with different concepts and translation strategies and techniques which are not necessarily easy to grasp for trainee translators (Way, Catherine. 2014. Structuring a legal translation course: A framework for decision-making in legal translation training. In Le Cheng, King Kui Sin & Anne Wagner (eds.), The Ashgate handbook of legal translation . Farnham: Ashgate), particularly when applied to a legal context. It is our experience that translation students tend to focus on the product (text production) and do not spend enough time analysing the source text, which results in obvious mistakes in mainly – but not only – cultural (legal), textual and linguistic aspects. The interdisciplinary nature of legal translation calls for an integrative model for teaching and learning. The model presented provides trainees with a framework for source text analysis that places the communicative situation and the translation brief at the core from which three fundamental dimensions, based on the aspects mentioned above, develop. Elements such as the legal cultures involved, legal text typologies or the level of specialisation of terms and discourse are some of the aspects to be considered, so allowing trainees to achieve a thorough understanding of the source text for a conscious translation. The model will be applied to a specific source text and translation brief.

Open Access December 7, 2020

The model of Mary between Islam and Catholicism: The figurativization of normative principles in the intercultural exchange

Jenny Ponzo

Page range: 301-315

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Abstract

In the Catholic tradition, saintly characters work as figurativizations or narrative representations of underlying values and normative principles and therefore represent strategic communication media to disseminate particular models of behavior among the faithful. This paper tests the efficacy of the representation of saintly figures in the case of the interreligious dialogue by focusing on the case study of the construction and communication of the figure of the Virgin Mary in the encounter between Catholics and Muslims. What emerges from an analysis of scholarly and institutional texts, as well as from some reflections on ecumenical practices in Marian shrines, is that the representation of Mary as the figurativization of abstract values and norms mostly concerns a cultivated elite and that the dialogue on the respective representations of Mary is quite limited and concerns especially Mary as the model of the perfect pious and devout person.

December 7, 2020

The semiotic puzzle: Authentic languages & international law

Clara Chapdelaine-Feliciati

Page range: 317-341

Abstract

The principle of the equal authority of authentic languages enshrined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) has created significant debates in the interpretation of multilingual treaties. In this context, the present article explores the complex ramifications of the legal translation of human rights treaty provisions and the “translatability” and transposition of legal concepts into other linguistic frameworks. It considers whether a semiotic analysis of the content of UN international human rights treaties conducted in a single authentic language, English or French, has a raison d’être , in light of Victoria Welby’s Threefold Laws of Meaning . The article further assesses whether the Sense and Significance of treaty provisions will differ in distinct languages. It begins by examining the important role attributed to English and French at the international level. Secondly, it studies the problem of the variations between the meaning(s) of provisions enshrining rights in two or more authentic languages, namely Arabic, English, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish, and which interpretation should prevail under the Vienna Convention . For this purpose, it considers problems that arise expressly in English and French by conducting a comparative study of these languages with the Spanish and Chinese texts of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).

December 7, 2020

The translation of affirmative action into legal discourse in Brazil

Celina Frade

Page range: 343-357

Abstract

Several studies have recently discussed legal translation beyond the transfer of equivalent linguistic and terminological features from a source language to a target language. Such perspectives can provide linguistics, translators and legislators with a framework for translating outside events of social life, including its demands, knowledge, wishes and cultural developments throughout periods of time into legal discourse. In this paper, we aim to discuss a broader approach of legal translation to depict how public policies on affirmative action have been introduced in Brazil in the light of institutionalization and further instrumentalization by law. In particular, we make an attempt to show how domestic legislation is translated and enacted considering both the context (as the source ‘language’) and legal discourse (as the target language). Our claim is that the process entails a transformation or translation of context (common sense achieved by society) into legal discourse (law) by means of categorization of everyday concepts into legal concepts to meet both the socioeconomic and historical contexts at hand and the framework of written law. The analysis is based on the Rio de Janeiro state law 5346/2008, a landmark law ruling affirmative action in Brazil insofar as it expands the categories of beneficiaries – the so-called quotistas – taking into consideration the social, political and economic context then. In addition, we argue that the criterion of categorization is not arbitrary but is rather cultural, economic and historically driven and objectivates the human production of a role identity of the beneficiaries beyond subjective intentions. To conclude, this analysis was only made possible with the contribution of more comprehensive viewpoints on legal translation and the role played by social perceptions in the translatability of domestic legislation in monolingual jurisdictions.

January 18, 2021

Exploring cyberbullying: a socio-semiotic perspective

Le Cheng, Xitao Hu, Aleksandra Matulewska, Anne Wagner

Page range: 359-378

Abstract

With the wide application of Internet, the negative sides related to cyberspace become prominent, including cyberbullying. In such a sense, it is necessary to delimit and define cyberbullying as one important legal term for some relevant cybercrimes. Cyberbullying, in its different forms, is common among children and adolescents, and is facilitated by the increased use of technology. But there is no global legal definition and standard in this area. The authors consider it significant to take into account the international perspective of instrumentalization of law in respect of cyberbullying, which may lead to the formulation of such a definition. This article first explores the definitions, legal mechanisms and its relevant laws in the US, the EU and China to find out their similarities and differences. It is found that cyberbullying as a sign is socially-constituted, is interpreted differently in various jurisdictions, which indicates that the exploration of a sign should be located within and is intertwined with social, cultural and historical backgrounds. This research, as a case study, also provides useful implications for the understanding and interpretation of legal terms in a more general context. At the same time, cultures nowadays pervade one another, and so phenomena that were initially local may quickly and unexpectedly become global. This is the case of cyberbullying, initially associated with children and adolescents as perpetrators and victims, being now also practiced by adults who harass other adults.

About this journal

Objective
The International Journal of Legal Discourse (IJLD) is associated with Multicultural Association of Law and Language and International Academy of Linguistic Law. This journal covers both verbal and non-verbal aspects of legal discourse. This journal aims to provide a world-class platform for academic exchanges in legal discourse as well as its neighboring areas, tapping into research on law, discourse analysis, linguistics, politics, semiotics, sociology and psychology. This journal invites contributions examining the interface of law and other disciplines, and exploring the interaction among law professionals, administrators, policy makers and other social actors.

Topics

law
discourse studies
applied linguistics
sociology

Article formats
Research articles, Reviews