Semiotics, language, and law: the linguistic turn in Western jurisprudence

Abstract

Abstract In the latter half of the 20th century, with the development of philosophy studies, Western jurisprudence also witnessed a linguistic turn in its field. A series of academic schools appeared consecutively, such as the school of semantic analysis, the school of new rhetoric, the school of legal interpretation, and the school of structural semiotics. Their analytical paradigms, which were skeptical of the views of legal languages in traditional theories of jurisprudence, are interdisciplinary and multidimensional in nature and characteristics. Normally, there are three methods used in the linguistic turn of Western jurisprudence, that is, the method of symbolic restoration, the method of structural and functional analysis, and the method of legal hermeneutics. Promoted by the linguistic turn, two traditions of legal semiotics also developed. One is the legal theory based on Greimasian semiotics, and the other is based on Peircean semiotics. The linguistic turn in jurisprudence still represents a breakthrough and innovation in the paradigm of legal theoretical studies, as it leads to a re-examination of language, which is no longer treated as a tool but as a philosophical afterthought in relation to the human being.