Identifying the meanings hidden in legal texts: The three conditions of relevance theory and their sufficiency
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Sol Azuelos-Atias
Abstract
I present a tool of interpretation that can be applied to legal texts. The tool is intended for people who wish to make sure that they thoroughly understand a certain text – including the meanings hidden between its lines in general, and in particular for legal laypersons who wish to make sure that they thoroughly understand a legal text.
I have developed this tool of interpretation from the relevance-theoretic communicative principle of relevance; I will show that the tool supplies a general method of demonstrating that certain meanings (including meta-forms, implications, and socio-semiotic meanings) are hidden in a communicated text. According to relevance theory, the interpretation accepted by the addressees of a spoken utterance reconstructs the speaker’s meaning; the tool of interpretation enables other recipients of the utterance’s text to identify the addressee’s interpretation. This tool consists of three conditions that function as a criterion of correctness of interpretations in the following sense: if an interpretation meets the three conditions then it is the addressee’s interpretation – the interpretation that reconstructs the meanings the text’s producer intended to convey, whether these meanings were presented explicitly or not.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Hidden meanings in legal discourse
- Comparing the incomparable and legal discourse
- Two assumptions in legal discourse: To answer for self and to tell the truth
- Le sens caché: Refoulement et impensé dans le discours de la loi sémiotique des significations cachées du discours juridique
- Multiple historical and social layers of interpretation of marital rape in England
- Revisiting judgment translation in Hong Kong
- Exemption and exegesis: Judicial interpretation of exemption clauses in England, Australia, and India
- Identifying the meanings hidden in legal texts: The three conditions of relevance theory and their sufficiency
- The consequences and effects of language transformations in legal discourse
- Exploring identities in police interrogations
- Rights, responsibilities, and resistance: Legal discourse and intervention legislation in the Northern Territory in Australia
- An exploration of the semantic domain of legal language
- The hidden meanings in the case law of the European Court for Human Rights
- Crimes of the sign: Politics and performatives in the Treason Trials of 1794
- Showing what “marriage” is: Law’s civilizing sign
- A sociosemiotic approach to the legal dispute over the crime of whoring with an underage girl in China
- Uncovering hidden meanings in legal discourse on the elderly: A semioethical perspective
- Deontic meaning making in legislative discourse
- Hidden meanings of the words “religion” and “religious” in legal discourse
- Hidden cultures in law: Metaphor and translation in legal discourse
- Negotiating language status in multilingual jurisdictions: Rhetoric and reality
- Burying attitudes in words: Linguistic realization of the shift of judges’ court conciliation style
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Hidden meanings in legal discourse
- Comparing the incomparable and legal discourse
- Two assumptions in legal discourse: To answer for self and to tell the truth
- Le sens caché: Refoulement et impensé dans le discours de la loi sémiotique des significations cachées du discours juridique
- Multiple historical and social layers of interpretation of marital rape in England
- Revisiting judgment translation in Hong Kong
- Exemption and exegesis: Judicial interpretation of exemption clauses in England, Australia, and India
- Identifying the meanings hidden in legal texts: The three conditions of relevance theory and their sufficiency
- The consequences and effects of language transformations in legal discourse
- Exploring identities in police interrogations
- Rights, responsibilities, and resistance: Legal discourse and intervention legislation in the Northern Territory in Australia
- An exploration of the semantic domain of legal language
- The hidden meanings in the case law of the European Court for Human Rights
- Crimes of the sign: Politics and performatives in the Treason Trials of 1794
- Showing what “marriage” is: Law’s civilizing sign
- A sociosemiotic approach to the legal dispute over the crime of whoring with an underage girl in China
- Uncovering hidden meanings in legal discourse on the elderly: A semioethical perspective
- Deontic meaning making in legislative discourse
- Hidden meanings of the words “religion” and “religious” in legal discourse
- Hidden cultures in law: Metaphor and translation in legal discourse
- Negotiating language status in multilingual jurisdictions: Rhetoric and reality
- Burying attitudes in words: Linguistic realization of the shift of judges’ court conciliation style
