EAN: 9781501518942

THE PRAGMATIC TURN IN LAW MOUTON SERIES IN PR...

In legal interpretation  where does meaning come from? Law is made from language  yet law 
unlike other language-related disciplines  has not so far experienced its pragmatic turn
towards inference and the construction of meaning. This book investigates to what extent a
pragmatically based view of l linguistic and legal interpretation can lead to new theoretical
views for law and  in addition  to practical consequences in legal decision-making.With its
traditional emphasis on ?the letter of the law? and the immutable stability of a text as legal
foundation  law has been slow to take the pragmatic perspective: namely  the language-user?'s
experience and activity in making meaning. More accustomed to literal than to pragmatic notions
of meaning  that is  ?in? the text rather than constructed by speakers and hearers ? the
disciplines of law may be culturally resistant to the pragmatic turn. By bringing together the
different but complementary perspectives of pragmaticians and lawyers  this book addresses the
issue of to what extent legal meaning can be productively analysed as deriving from resources
beyond the text  ? beyond the letter of the law.This collection re-visits the feasibility of
the notion of literal meaning for legal interpretation and  at the same time  the feasibility
of pragmatic meaning for law. Can explications of pragmatic meaning support court actions in
the same way concepts of literal meaning have traditionally supported statutory interpretations
and court judgements? What are the consequences of a user-based view of language for the law 
in both its practices of interpretation and its definition of itself as a field? Readers will
find in this collection means of approaching such questions  and promising routes for inquiry
into the genre- and field-specific characteristics of inference in law.In many respects  the
problem of literal vs. pragmatic? meaning confined to the text vs. reaching beyond it ? will
appear to parallel the dichotomy in law between textualism and intentionalism. There are indeed
illuminating connections between the pair of linguistic terms and the more publicly
controversial legal ones. But the parallel is not exact  and the linguistic dichotomy is in any
case anterior to the legal one. Even as linguistic-pragmatic investigation may serve legal
domains  the legal questions themselves point back to central conditions of all linguistic
meaning.

Aktuelle Preise zur EAN 9781501518942

Produktinformationen zur 9781501518942