Volume 2017, Issue 216 - Special Issue: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law, Guest Editors: Anne Wagner and Ning Ye

Law exposes the variety and complexity of legal language. The mastery of the cultural and spatio-temporal artefacts is thus necessary to understand the social institutions of a country. Their mode of production may be considered as creating “forms of life,” “language games,” or “institutional practices of the interpreting community.”

The “verbal–nonverbal” distinction is mostly used in everyday language and its “‘naïve-natural’ attitude” (Husserl). It confirms the idea that a word/verb, as a component of human expressivity, is the basic unit of language. Theories of Peirce, Saumjan, and Searle highlight how a different, predominantly “‘non-naïve’-natural attitude” is required to understand the distinction and its position in the semiotic toolkit. To support this conclusion, Husserl unfolds a methodological approach of varying attitudes and attitude-changes, including important diversifications of ontology. A consequence is the need for an interregional ontological approach, which in this article leads to a consideration of social psychology (Lewin) and quantum theory (Bohm) because both underline that words and meanings are forces in fields, and by no means isolated single units. Word and meaning are to be understood as forces, and meaning-making as well as interpretation a matter of force field considerations. Semiotics should thus cherish dynamic features, whereby the “verbal–nonverbal” distinction teaches us at a “non-naïve” attitude level, that a word/verb is always a non-word/verb as well. The greatness of semiotics is in the understanding of such dynamic and continuously creative inversions.

Some symbols so skillfully traverse epochs and cultures that they are depicted as almost “natural” embodiments of abstract values. The balance is one of these symbols, adopted to represent justice from ancient Egypt until the present time. Power appropriates this “natural meaning” in order to construct a rhetoric of fairness. Yet, semiotics unveils that the balance, like every symbol, is not natural at all, but underpinned by a specific ideology. From the semiotic point of view, the balance is a device that produces indexes, i. e., causal signs that visually signal an invisible property, weight. Although this translation is not automatic, but based on specific indexical circumstances (such as the type of balance, the weighing techniques, and the measuring standards that are used), the balance is paradoxically turned into a symbol of justice precisely because it is depicted as a non-semiotic device, as an instrument that cannot lie, as a machine.

The evaluation of visual aspects of law has had a profound influence in the last decade in specific fields of legal sciences (i. e., criminology, studies of legal evidence), focusing on the extent to which visual evidence (visual patterns, images, diagrams, and symbols) underpin what and how we can perceive different types of legal evidence, and how the difference in perception affects the manipulation of visual evidence in practice. Taking the recent development in the field of legal evidence seriously, we could claim that the visual communication in law is above all a means of communicating and understanding different types of visual evidence. In general terms, visual exhibits (symbols, images, graphs, photographs, etc.) have the potential to convey more complex meanings and often represent concepts that are challenging to articulate explicitly in more conventional verbal forms of evidence, due to their complexity or lack of specificity. The purpose of this paper is to define the nature and properties of visual aids from a semiotic perspective Visual semiotics offers exceptionally thorough analytical tools for the detailed and nuanced study of visual legal evidence in the courts. In the final part of the paper we’ll illustrate the application of semiotic analysis for evaluating the rules of evidence in the Estonian legal system.

Legal discourse is characterized by many layers of verbal signs that refer, according to the context (historical, social, cultural), to diverse meanings. In this article I discuss two theses. ( Th. i .) Law is, like language, based on signs. These signs are like “clues” that suggest possible semantic operations but only through an interpretive process meanings come into being. ( Th. ii .) In law, like in ordinary language, signs are the consequence of a necessity, of a need of knowing the world and of ordering it according to categories. In law, this necessity has a peculiar nature because it originates in the decision-making process and because its consequences are normative and produce effects on life and reality; analogical inference offers a good example of the connection between the need to fix the semantic content of verbal signs (often intensional) and the decision-making process. Meanings in legal discourse are thus intersubjective, time-related and are in a permanent relational with the historical interpretant.

Unlike any other form of professional communication, legal discourse, especially in a legislative context, is unique in the sense that it is full of contradictions. Firstly, it is highly depersonalized, as its illocutionary force is independent of any specific writer or reader, and yet it is meant to address a diverse range of audiences. Secondly, it is meant for ordinary citizens, but is written in a style that is meant only for legal specialists. Thirdly, although its primary function is to assign rights and impose obligations to act or prohibit action, it is written in a highly nominal style (language of thinking) rather than verbal style (language of doing). And finally, legislative provisions are meant to be “clear,” “precise,” “unambiguous,” on the one hand, and “all-inclusive,” on the other, which can be seen as a contratdiction in terms. Most of these seeming contradictions make it difficult for the various stakeholders, which include specialists as well as non-specialists, to manage “socio-pragmatic space” in the construction and, more importantly, interpretation of such provisions, particularly when they are interpreted in broadly socio-political contexts. Drawing on some of the contradictory interpretations of certain sections of the Basic Law, widely regarded as the mini-constitution of Hong Kong, this paper will identify and discuss key theoretical issues emerging from a diversity of meanings attributed to somewhat innocuous legislative constructions, which precipitated the “Occupy Central” movement, largely popularized as the symbolic “Umbrella Movement.” The paper thus attempts to highlight two rather different aspects of interpretation of legal meaning, one in the court of law for the negotiation of justice, and the other in wider socio-political and public domains where law is interpreted broadly with wider social implications.

By exploring the cultural discrepancies in Chinese legal texts and their English versions and to what extent legal and cultural discrepancies influence and constrain legal translation, the study argues that it is useful to consider cultural discrepancies within a semiotic framework. Language is a phenomenon and factor that links different cultures; the use of language is crucial to any legal system. Law, as a cultural product, is attended by cultural discrepancies when switched into other languages for the purpose of achieving equivalence. After a brief overview of cultural differences in translation, legal translation in particular, the study is set to examine the role of translation in crossing through different legal cultures and backgrounds and investigate barriers in the process of translation. Investigating cultural discrepancies in legal translation within a semiotic framework allows us to focus on certain interpretations by acknowledging that legal texts are composed with systems of systems and interacting with other cultural aspects in a wider context.

The transplantation of law has always been linked with legal translation either in China or abroad. The latter is the premise of the former as the former is the outcome of the latter. Since the languages people speak differ from country to country, it is necessary for us to translate foreign laws into our own language in order to learn, absorb, judge, comment, and make the right choice. This thesis takes the example of Elements of International Law , which was translated and published in 1864, analyzing the achievements and shortcomings of the first integrated legal translation practice in modern China as well as its influence on legal translation, transplantation, and localization in modern China. Here, I put forward my own humble opinions, seeking advice from other professionals.

From 1844 to 1845, the translation problems with the Supplementary Treaty (aka Treaty of the Bogue ) and the Treaty of Nanking were revealed through successive back translations by Walter Henry Medhurst in the Chinese Repository . A comparison of the official Chinese and English language versions of the two treaties shows noteworthy problems of addition, omission, and misinterpretation. These translation problems can be understood and interpreted in the light of the fact that the Qing side had relinquished the right to employ its own translators and knew little about the principles of international law. Researchers into the history of Sino-foreign treaties and Sino-foreigner relations should give careful attention to the role of translation in the history of this period.

This paper is located at the juncture of text and image, law and justice, religion and rationality, while its main subject is set to be visual expressions of the law-relevant emotion of shame. Specifically, I suggest that the late Renaissance academic depictions of “Susanna and the Elders,” based on The Holy Bible , “Daniel 13,” namely Rubens (1607), van Dyck (1621–1622), and Rembrandt (1647), disclose the conditions under which the authentic meaning of the text can be understood both beyond the moral denunciation of sinfulness and/or the study of the nude in a particular historical context of Flemish Baroque. In fact I argue that the three artists co-create and elaborate the Biblical text by drawing shame from its narrative structure in order to disclose this emotion in affection-image as being relevant to the legal process and central to the text. Special attention is given to the relationship between text and image. For my theoretic I use Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of emotion and Gilles Deleuze’s work on visual arts.

National or local authorities regularly commission artists to build or construct sculptures and artworks destined for a place in a public space. Some of those sculptures and artworks are monumentally huge. Positioned in the open landscape, they are visible from a considerable distance. This contribution focuses on three such sculptures in the United Kingdom. The first, “Angel of the North,” was completed in 1998 and is standing at Gateshead in the North East of England. The second, “Anglo Saxon Warrior,” has not yet been built to a massive scale – although smaller, life-size versions were – but some debate has taken place in Stoke-on-Trent in North Staffordshire in the West Midlands about the possibility and remote likelihood of its construction. The third, “Golden,” is, however, at the time of writing, in the process of being assembled with an eye on erecting it, in 2014, at the very same location, Stoke-on-Trent. Proposals for all aforementioned artworks emerged against the backdrop of regional de-industrialization and were, at least partly, devised as an answer to economic and social deprivation in both regional localities. In this contribution an effort is made to tease out the symbolic intricacies embedded in all three artworks. Although all include references to what could be called the eternal origins of a mythical common law universe, each suggests, projects, and attempts to encode a moral and legal order in quite distinctly different ways.

Expiration dates on perishable food items provide some indication as to when the item was produced and how long it’s been sitting on the shelf. However, in the United States, expiration dates are voluntary and subjectively characterize the quality of food as such dates, implemented by the food’s manufacturer, are not legally mandated. Culturally speaking then, why do we pay so much attention to them? This paper will examine the relationship between expiration dates on food and the visual-based perceptions about law that inform these socio-legal semiotics of regulation while exploring the complexity of law concerning the symbolism, construction, and reception of such labels as either legal truth or legal fiction.

In 2003, Gilad Sharon, the younger son of the late Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Prime Minister, was being investigated by the police for his part in what is known as the Cyril Kern affair, which involved not only illegal donations to Ariel Sharon’s campaign fund to become leader of the Likud Party in 1999 but also a long money trail around the world. Large sums of money were being paid to Gilad Sharon as fees for vague consulting services. Since Ariel Sharon was the prime minister and a member of the Knesset, he had immunity from search unless it was withdrawn by the Israeli parliament. Gilad Sharon lived on the same ranch as his father, taking full advantage of his father’s immunity. The police refrained from issuing a search warrant of the Prime Minister’s private home, but demanded documents from Sharon relating to the money trail. When questioned by the police, he claimed the right of silence, which – so it was asserted by Sharon and his lawyers – covered documents he may have in his possession in his house. Moreover, Sharon claimed that the documents may not incriminate him, but someone else (his father). A warrant was issued by the magistrate’s court requiring Sharon to submit the documents. This was overturned by the district court, but finally in December 2003 the Israeli Supreme Court ordered Sharon to submit the documents to the magistrate’s court in order for the proceedings to continue. In the paper, the court case will be examined through the semantics of the phrase immunity from following the concept of the semiotic square (e. g., Greimas 1988). It will be shown that the narrative of the case may be built up from one immunity leading to another, and then to a third. The neutral term not liable to + not immune from may lead to silence.

The State’s response to the problems posed by the existence of indigenous special jurisdiction left for jurisprudence, in a decision model case by case, the determination of what is the meaning of the rights of indigenous peoples in a State like Colombia. At the same time, it has tried to impose the new constitutional order on the different indigenous peoples, thus acknowledging their dual role as equal citizens before the law and a people with differential rights. In this paper I want to address two issues: first, the discussion about the coordination of special indigenous jurisdiction with national justice; and, second, I want to show the project for which the Colombian Constitution was translated into seven indigenous languages and show some of the results of such a government initiative.

Interpreting for the police is the backbone of legal interpreting. Yet it is grossly overshadowed by the more visible and more public court interpreting. This paper describes the setting of police interpreting, highlighting some of the major issues and challenges in the field that place a lot more than linguistic pressure on the interpreter. It examines the task of interpreters working within the Australian police setting and casts light on three prevailing practices that tend to challenge the interpreter. The practices relate to the selection, briefing, and training of interpreters working for law enforcement investigations. The paper argues that the current training, instructions, and perception of the role of the police interpreter are inadequate. It further argues that for police interpreting to become professional, formal training in the context of police investigations and pre-committal proceedings is required.

In the last few decades, arbitration has been increasingly adopted in trade and commerce to resolve conflicts. As this method of settling commercial disputes is commonly considered an efficient, economical and effective alternative to litigation, the language used in arbitration documents is usually deemed to differ from that of litigation texts. However, in recent years there has been a narrowing between the two practices, as litigation processes and procedures have increasingly been seen to influence arbitration practices. In view of these considerations, the paper investigates the nature and the extent of the “colonization” of commercial arbitration discourse by litigation language in the Italian context, and explores the motivations for such an interdiscursive process. To better understand how and to what extent language forms/functions correlate to the “colonization” of arbitration discourse, the paper focuses on the lexico-semantic elements of the Italian arbitration texts examined here and on the linguistic expression of their rhetorical-pragmatic strategies. In particular, it examines whether key linguistic features of Italian legal language are also present in the texts taken into consideration. The analysis is based on the recording of recent Italian arbitral proceedings as well as awards of commercial arbitration cases, and also examines documents used in Online Dispute Resolution, a field which is supposed to be more user-friendly and accessible to laymen wishing for clear resolutions to resolve their disputes. Relying on the analysis of the texts, the chapter shows the presence of the main lexical, syntactic and textual patterns typical of Italian legal language. The presence of these features can be explained not only by the legal background of many of the arbitrators but also by a process of standardization which seems to condition also the non-legal experts working in this field.

Cases with rule paradox are common in Chinese legal practice. The result of the reasoning process in cases with rule paradox is usually exclusion of the application of the seemingly applicable rules and creation of exceptions to the original rules. Therefore, interpreters have a higher standard to meet in their reasoning. The traditional method of “teleological restriction” is susceptible to the criticism of insufficient reasoning, but the method of principle weighing and balancing can enhance the persuasiveness of the reasoning process. According to the law of competing principles proposed of Alexy, rules are produced after principle weighing and balancing. If we reverse Alexy’s law, any rule can be reduced to principle weighing and balancing. This reversal provides theoretical basis for our method of handling cases with rule paradox, which allows interpreters using sociosemiotic approach to rediscover the missing principles and factual elements in individual cases and to reopen the process of principle weighing and balancing before they make decision.

The courtroom can be seen as a semiotic space where the practice of signs is institutionalized. There are specific ways to perform signs in court, be they verbal (e. g., turn-taking) or nonverbal (e. g., attire). Legal signs communicate and signify differently than their non-legal counterparts. Laypeople may not be aware of such differences, and may encounter a gap between their expectation and the actual practice of legal signs. This is precisely the case for unrepresented litigants, laypeople who go to court without legal counsel, whose understanding and practice of signs usually differ from legal ones given their limited exposure to legal knowledge and culture. This paper examines unrepresented litigants’ lay practice of signs in Hong Kong courtrooms, and analyses how it clashes with that used by legal professionals. Our data consist of courtroom observations of 54 Cantonese case managements and 13 Cantonese trials in district courts in Hong Kong, 10 interviews with unrepresented litigants and 6 relevant judgments. The paper shows that the differences in the use of semiotics often place laypeople as out-group members of the law and may limit their access to justice. Our analysis will contribute to an understanding of laypeople’s behavior in the courtroom, which in turn bridges the communication gap between laypeople and legal professionals in common law jurisdictions.

Semiotically, it is worth discussing some legal terminology that expresses the legal subjects in the criminal procedure law drawn up in 2012. In China’s new criminal procedure law, it can been seen that different legal concepts are adopted to refer to the same legal subject, while different legal subjects are referred to by the same legal concept. In Article 106 of the new criminal procedure law, “participants in the proceedings” means the parties, legal representatives, agents ad litem, defenders, witnesses, expert witnesses, and interpreters. However, all kinds of criminal lawsuit participants appearing in the new criminal procedure law are far beyond the scope of “participants in the proceedings” defined in Article 106. While Article 3, Article 4, and Article 290 of the new criminal procedure law are all about subjects in the criminal procedure law, nevertheless, why is Article 290 arranged as the last article? With the help of the Peircean semiotic methodology and Greimas’ semiotic theory fused with legal materiality, some semiotic interpretations of legal terms are very necessary. Background metalanguage, consensus metalanguage, and context-oriented metalanguage are the foundation for analyzing the problems mentioned previously. In addition, legal language autonomy and unipolarity, the relationship of legal text and real legal meaning, and the transition from law in the text to the law in action provides several strong perspectives to make them clear. Drawing upon semiotic methodology fused with legal materiality, this paper will explore legislative techniques and methodology, especially logical deduction by reasoning between lawmakers and judges, including legal interpretation, legal reasoning, and interest measure. It will be beneficial to establish the authority of China’s new criminal procedure law and have it smoothly implemented in China.

Deeply rooted in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, court conciliation conducted by judges in Chinese courtroom has played an important role in resolving civil disputes in China. However, severe criticisms against court conciliation have never been ceased. Critics generally attribute problems to the integration of mediation into adjudication and judges’ playing of dual roles as adjudicator and mediator. Sadly, little has been done to explore how judges’ dual roles in court conciliation are performed and changed, and how the performance and change of judges’ dual roles may affect justice and fairness in dispute resolution. This paper compares the similarities and differences of a judge’s role as an adjudicator and the role of a mediator, analyzes how judges’ dual roles are performed and changed through different patterns of information flow and information sharing, and discusses the impacts of judges’ role change and ways to resolve role conflicts. It is found that similarities between the two roles make it possible for judges in CC to play dual roles, but different role expectations give rise to role conflicts which may, to some extent, be dissolved through effective ways of information exchange.

This article explores the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal court proceedings by analyzing functions of the questions with X to iu koto ga arimasu ka? (‘Is it the case that X took place?’), based on courtroom discourse data and trial manuals for legal professionals. To discuss the roles of lawyers’ questions with the projection with the frame “Is it the case that … ?” in witness examination, the projection’s ideational, textual and interpersonal functions are analyzed drawing on Halliday’s systemic functional approach to discourse. By analyzing sequential roles of the projection, the article highlights the ways in which it serves as a story-construction device, as well as a signpost marker towards exposing inconsistency in witness’s testimony. The analysis also reveals that the dual ideational meanings of the projection – one everyday and the other technical – may leave lay participants unaware of its legal purposes, thus creating a potentially problematic lay-professional communication gap. The discussion of the interpersonal aspect suggests the projection’s role to neutralize coercive force of leading questions as well as to index an identity of legal authority. The paper concludes that while projection “Is it the case … ?” seems to symbolize the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal trials, its neutralizing effect and arbitrariness in use also imply the pseudo-adversarial and hybrid orientation.

On-site law enforcement is routine work for Chinese traffic police to effectively control a congested city. Misunderstanding, confusion, and even conflict frequently occur between traffic police and offenders about traffic offence penalties. Based on an analysis of digital recordings, the present study investigates institutional interaction from a semiotic perspective. The institutional discourse, taken as a sign, creates an interpretant in the language of traffic police, which works as representamen to be interpreted by offenders. By examining the meaning construction in the interaction, the study reveals the way police impose penalties exploiting the impact of their linguistic, professional and social background. The findings indicate that the resistance or obedience to penalties is a reflection of the interpretant produced by the offenders in the process of mediation. As China has recently made great progress in the creation of rules of law, police organizations have established many new clauses, covering every aspect of police routine. However, the clauses relating to the use of legal language for police officers encountering offenders can, to some degree, result in different interpretations of the obscure language and conventional procedures, which can thus impede effective communication between two participants. Apart from the rigid limitation on and strict observance of legal language choices, the imbalanced distribution of legal knowledge between professionals and laymen, the complexity of identity construction and historical and social cultures may impose constraints on the institutional discourse. This study suggests that the police should be aware of institutional discourse as a semiotic process and should modify their linguistic strategy to effect positive interaction.

I describe and discuss a series of court cases that focus upon on decoding the meaning of slang terms. Examples include sexual slang used in a description by a child and an Internet Relay Chat containing a conspiracy to murder. I consider the task presented by these cases for the forensic linguist and the roles the linguist may assume in determining the meaning of slang terms for the Courts. These roles are identified as linguist as naïve interpreter, lexicographer, case researcher, and cultural mediator. Each of these roles is suggestive of different strategies that might be used from consulting formal slang dictionaries and less formal Internet sources, to collecting case specific corpora and examining all the extraneous material in a particular case. Each strategy is evaluated both in terms of the strength of evidence provided and its applicability to the forensic context.

Résumé Greimas applique aux structures narratives profondes du récit le carré sémiotique servant à représenter l’émergence de la signification à l’intérieur d’une structure. Dans le présent article, nous essayons d’extraire les structures sémantiques profondes du code pénal chinois en adaptant le carré greimassien aux spécificités du discours juridique. Du modèle sémiotique constitutionnel du code pénal à ses deux substructures, en passant par l’analyse de l’ épistémé qui commande leur manifestation, nos analyses essaient de faire ressortir les spécificités typiques du discours juridique qui nous paraissent incontournables pour l’analyse sémiotique de ce type de discours particulier