Preface: Law and Legal Linguistics in a Constant State of Transition

Anne Wagner,Aleksandra Matulewska

doi:10.2478/cl-2021-0010

Abstract

Abstract Legal linguistics or jurilinguistics as it has been called recently, is a relatively new field of research. The first research into the field started with analysing the content of laws (the epistemic stage). Later on, lawyers started being interested in manners of communicating laws (the heuristic stage). This Special Issue of Comparative Legilinguistics contains two texts devoted to the development of legal linguistics, legal languages and legal translation and two papers on an institutional stratification of legal linguistics. It is a continuation of research published in the same journal (Special Issue no. 45 titled “The Evil Twins and Their Silent Otherness in Law and Legal Translation”) providing some insights into the problems of communication in legal settings.

Highlights

Law is driven by a variety of influences, it incorporates mechanisms and ways of thinking that are generated by a combination of sociology, philosophy, psychology and history, amongst others
The present Special Issue focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of legal linguistics and its various sub-fields
It provides some insight into the intricacies of the development of the field, focusing on legal communication and communication in legal settings

Summary

Introduction

Law is driven by a variety of influences, it incorporates mechanisms and ways of thinking that are generated by a combination of sociology, philosophy, psychology and history, amongst others. Each one has to see it as a pure instrumentalization of Law for the search of signs to be construed, and so any relevant occurrence of legal provisions, of decision-making, is supported by language interpretation. C’est une plante cultivée et elle l’a toujours été même dans les sociétés sauvages.” [The tongue is not a wild plant It is a cultivated plant and it has always been so even in wild societies.] (Malmberg in Meschonnic 1997: 141). It poses issues surrounding the interaction between history, etymology and contemporary legal translation

Tradition and Modernity facing Legal Linguistics

An Institutional Stratification of Legal Linguistics

Conclusion