Transparency and doubt: Understanding and interpretation in pragmatics and in law

Abstract

1. OVERVIEW In legal practice and often also in legal theory, issues of interpretation of a law, a precedent, and even an indictment and a sentence, loom large. Sometimes such issues hinge on technical legal terms, but more often they have to do with the way certain expressions of everyday language are or should be understood in a certain context of use. Pragmatics is that part of the theory of language that undertakes among other things 2 - to account for the principles of language use that allow for users of a language to understand each other, i.e., to interpret appropriately, in the context of use, utterances or texts. In this interdisciplinary paper, we attempt to show how a pragmatically oriented conception Of interpretation in law, which makes use of some of the insights of pragmatics, can offer a fruitful solution to some traditional puzzles. At least three principal meanings of the term 'interpretation' may be distinguished (Wrtblewski 1983a: 72 f.; 1985a: 21 f.): (a) 'Interpretation' sensu largissimo [SL-interpretation] means any understanding of any object as an object of culture, through the ascription to its material substratum ~)f a meaning, a sense, or a value. This concept is, philosophically, one of the bases for claiming that the