Literalness and Inferencing

Characterizations of legal discourse have tended to focus on the meaning of legal terms, the difference to their non-legal meaning and the differences in legal concepts between different cultures. This emphasis on the words in legal texts is related to a view that meaning and the construction of meaning from legal texts comes exclusively or primarily from information represented in words and morphemes, i.e. as “text”. This is reflected in jurists’ tendencies towards a view of language, encapsulated in part in canons of interpretation, to stress the role of “plain meaning” and “literal interpretation”, at the expense of theories of meaning “construction” from texts as part of legal “interpretation”. Based on a view of interpretation as essentially meaning construction by readers this project looks at types and levels of inference and their dialectic with linguistic, i.e. langue, meanings (or reference histories) constructing interpretations. One issue focused on will be whether there are types of inferences that are unique to genres of legal discourse. Another issue is the notion, figuring prominently in legal (and linguistic) argumentation of whether “literalness” can be more strictly defined, exactly how it is to be defined linguistically and if there are principles that determine the invocation of literalness in legal argumentation.