Legal interpretation: Meaning as social construction
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Le Cheng,
Le Cheng (b. 1976) is an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong and a professor at Zhejiang University 〈chengle163@hotmail.com〉. His research interests include semiotics, terminology, language and law, and discourse analysis. His publications include “A court judgment as dialogue” (2009); “Terminology evolution and legal development: A case study of Chinese legal terminology” (with S. Ni & K. K. Sin, 2010); “Who are Chinese citizens? A legislative language inquiry” (with S. Ni & K. K. Sin, 2010); and “Discourse and judicial thinking: A corpus-based study of court judgments in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China (2010).
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Winnie Cheng,
Winnie Cheng (b. 1958) is a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University 〈egwcheng@polyu.edu.hk〉. Her research interests include ESP, intercultural business and professional communication, intercultural pragmatics, and corpus linguistics. Her publications include “ ‘ahh ((laugh)) well there is no comparison between the two I think’: How do Hong Kong Chinese and native speakers of English disagree with each other?” (with A. Tsui, 2009); “Describing the extended meanings of lexical cohesion in a corpus of SARS spoken discourse” (2009); “Income/interest/net: Using internal criteria to determine the aboutness of a text” (2009); and “Media discourses in Hong Kong: Change in representation of human rights” (with P. Lam, 2010).
Abstract
This study investigates some cases related to the interpretation of law in Right of Abode cases heard by the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, and discusses the sharp contrast between the different versions of interpretation of the same legislative expressions as the same signs in similar cases heard by the same court. This study does not aim to find out the legislative intent of legislation, but to investigate the process of meaning-making in general and the intent seeking in these cases in particular from a socio-semiotic perspective. The study concludes that meaning-making in legal settings is neither purely a jurisprudential operation nor the choice among different canons of legal interpretation. It is rather the dialogue demonstrated in various forms, such as power negotiation and interest weighing. The study, therefore, argues that legal interpretation is a social practice and meaning-making in legal settings is an enterprise of social dialogue and power negotiation; in other words, legal interpretation is in a sense an inter-semiotic operation between law and its interfaces with society and politics.
About the authors
Le Cheng (b. 1976) is an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong and a professor at Zhejiang University 〈chengle163@hotmail.com〉. His research interests include semiotics, terminology, language and law, and discourse analysis. His publications include “A court judgment as dialogue” (2009); “Terminology evolution and legal development: A case study of Chinese legal terminology” (with S. Ni & K. K. Sin, 2010); “Who are Chinese citizens? A legislative language inquiry” (with S. Ni & K. K. Sin, 2010); and “Discourse and judicial thinking: A corpus-based study of court judgments in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China (2010).
Winnie Cheng (b. 1958) is a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University 〈egwcheng@polyu.edu.hk〉. Her research interests include ESP, intercultural business and professional communication, intercultural pragmatics, and corpus linguistics. Her publications include “ ‘ahh ((laugh)) well there is no comparison between the two I think’: How do Hong Kong Chinese and native speakers of English disagree with each other?” (with A. Tsui, 2009); “Describing the extended meanings of lexical cohesion in a corpus of SARS spoken discourse” (2009); “Income/interest/net: Using internal criteria to determine the aboutness of a text” (2009); and “Media discourses in Hong Kong: Change in representation of human rights” (with P. Lam, 2010).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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