Legal discourse: studies in linguistics, rhetoric and legal analysis

Abstract

The principal substantive aim of this study is that of providing a critical account of the relationship of law to language. While studies within the philosophy of law have, on occasion, examined the presuppositions of legal analysis and legal practice in the terminology of the philosophy of language, law and language have in general been treated as discrete phenomena - the conjunction "and" has marked a constant separation of distinctive areas of expertise. Utilising the linguistic methodologies developed within sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and critical semiotics,, the specific purpose of this study has been to develop an interdisciplinary approach to law and legal texts as language or as linguistic practice. It has been argued throughout this work that the language of the law is a prominent indicator of the social and historical genesis and motivation of the legal text as instrument of social regulation and discipline. Legal discourse, like any other of the traditional rhetorical genres or language varieties, is an historically and rhetorically organised product. It is thus proposed that a critical linguistic methodology can read within the structure of legal discourse the socio-historical and political affinities and conflicts that led to the emergence of the myth of law as a unitary language and as a discrete scientific discipline. If the present study has been in any measure succesful, it will have contributed to the deconstruction of that myth and to its displacement by a more adequate and critical concept of legal discourse as a language of power, as the pursuit of control over meaning and as instrument and expression of domination.