Research article

Against a local theory of meaning for the legal language – some general remarks

Article authors
  1. Paweł Banaś

Przeciwko lokalnej teorii znaczenia dla języka prawnego – uwagi ogólne

Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej, nr 1(14)/2017, s. 7-16

English

Abstract

Within philosophy of law as well as philosophy of language one can find a view suggesting that legal and natural languages have two different theories of meaning: meaning externalism and intentionalism accordingly. This view can be interpreted as a metaphysical one, ie. that there are two different kinds of facts that determine that expressions of legal and natural languages mean whatever they mean. For natural language these facts would be intentions of the speaker. Such a view of natural language seem intuitive as the aim of a communication is usually trying to grasp whatever a speaker has in mind. Such a view proves, however, problematic for the legal language. Meaning exteralism for legal language, on the other hand, allows for law to be objective. But it must show how its expressions are meaningful (as content is usually closely related to intentionality). As a result, a satisfactory theory of facts constituting linguistic meaning might require a pressuposition that meaning (also legal or natural) is a social artifact: its content is constituted by some kind of collective intentionality of language users. This solves a numer of problems with both intentionalism and meaning externalism – but also creates new ones that might require further studies.

Keywords

  • intentionalism
  • meaning externalism
  • legal language
  • natural language
  • theory of meaning
Full text PDF How to cite

References

27 reference entries

References

  1. Bach, K., Harnish, R.M. (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  2. Carston, R. (2013). Legal Texts and Canons of Construction: A View from Current Pragmatic Theory.

  3. In M. Freeman, F. Smith (Eds.), Law and Language, Current Legal Issues Volume 15 (pp. 8–33). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  4. Grice, P. (1957). Meaning. The Philosophical Review 66(3), 377–388.

  5. Grice, P. (1969). Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions. The Philosophical Review 68, 147–177.

  6. Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

  7. Hutto, D.D., Satne, G. (2015). The Natural Origins of Content. Philosophia 43, 521–536.

  8. Kaplan, D. (1970). Dthat. Syntax and Semantics 9, 221–243.

  9. Lewis, C.S. (1960). Studies in Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  10. Lewis, D. (1970). General Semantics. Synthese 22, 18–67.

  11. Loar, B. (1981). Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  12. Marmor, A. (2005). The Immorality of Textualism. Loyola Law Review 38, 2063-2079.

  13. Marmor, A. (2008). The Pragmatics of Legal Language. Ratio Juris 21(4), 423–452.

  14. Marmor, A. (2014). The Language of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  15. Moore, M.S. (2003). The Plain Truth About Legal Truth. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 26, 23–47.

  16. Neale, S. (1992). Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language. Linguistics and Philosophy 15, 509–559.

  17. Neale, S. (2017). Silent Reference. In G. Ostertag (Ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Essays in Honor of Stephen Schiffer (pp. 229–344). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  18. Scalia, A., Gutmann, A. (1997). A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press

  19. Schiffer, S. (1972). Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  20. Schiffer, S. (1982). Intention-Based Semantics. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23, 119–156.

  21. Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.

  22. Speaks, J. (2016). Theories of Meaning. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from:

  23. https://plato.stanford.edu/.

  24. Sperber, D., Wilson D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

  25. Sperber, D., Wilson, D. (2002). Pragmatics, modularity and mind-reading. Mind & Language 17, 3–23.

  26. Strawson, P.F. (1964). Intention and convention in speech acts. The Philosophical Review 73, 439–460.

  27. Wilson, D., Sperber, D. (2002). Truthfulness and relevance. Mind 111, 583–632.

Publication information

Author and affiliation

Paweł Banaś

Uniwersytet Jagielloński

Issue data

Issue nr 1(14)/2017

Pages
7-16
Published
AccessOtwarty LicenceCC BY 4.0 ↗

How to cite

Bibliographic description and verified export formats.

Format AFPiFS

P. Banaś, Against a local theory of meaning for the legal language – some general remarks, „Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej” nr 1(14)/2017, s. 7–16, DOI: 10.36280/afpifs.2017.1.7