In a hate speech case a court might have to determine whether a person's words were hurtful or harmful. Would it be possible to determine whether words are hurtful or harmful by using linguistics? This article offers a linguistic perspective on a court's interpretation of the Equality Act in a hate speech case and focuses on speech acts and politeness. If the speech acts of a verbal exchange are studied and the levels of politeness are gauged, a court would be able to affirm the hurtfulness or harmfulness of the speaker's words. The article begins with a brief discussion on the potential role of the linguist in a courtroom; this is followed by a summary of the facts of the case. Then the court case is analysed and discussed in terms of speech acts and politeness. By employing principles in pragmatics the author reaches the same conclusion as the court.
Opsomming: Die regsdomein vereis te alle tye goeie taalkennis en -gebruik. Dit gebeur dikwels dat ʼn regsdispuut om taal en taalgebruik sentreer. Een só ʼn voorbeeld is die saak Commissioner for South African Revenue Service v. Labat Africa Limited. In sowel die betrokke appèlhofsaak as die voorafgaande hofsake word die regsuitspraak gebaseer op die interpretasie van die woord 'onkoste'. Met hierdie artikel word daar vasgestel of die interpretasie korrek is deur die onderhawige woord semanties te ontleed deur Shuy (1986) se analisemodel aan te wend. Die semantiese ontleding fokus onder meer op die definisie van die woord, semantiese veldanalise, komponensiële analise en kontekstualisering.
The South African judicial system has a variety of ways to determine the ordinary meaning of words, ranging from preceding court cases and academic publications to expert witnesses. However, one of the main resources in the interpretation of ordinary words is a dictionary. Much has already been published on both the use (and abuse) of dictionaries in court cases and the ordinary meaning of words as a legal phenomenon. In continuation of this discourse, I propose that jurists consider using a conceptual approach to the interpretation of ordinary words as opposed to relying overly on dictionaries. One such conceptual approach is the use of frames, which deals with meaning in a way that is similar to Gestalt. In this article, I suggest the use of Barsalou's (1992) frame structure that may be applied to a contested word in six steps. To illustrate the way Barsalou's frame functions, I have applied it to two contested words taken from South African court cases. Building a frame in order to determine the ordinary meaning of certain words in court cases proves to be a possible alternative or an additional resource to dictionaries.
In S v Molefe the presiding officer determines the meaning of the word "disposal" at the hand of two criteria, namely visibility and permanence; this means a body has to be permanently out of sight to be considered disposed of. He applies these two criteria in order to conclude if the accused is guilty of concealing the birth of her child by disposing of its body. In doing so, the court no longer interprets the word as an everyday word but turns it into a legal term. This note questions the linguistic soundness of the criteria by investigating how language structures space, and how these constructions relate to the word "disposal". In order to scrutinise the criteria, a text analysis was carried out by applying Talmy's ideas surrounding prepositions in structuring space and movement. Connected to this is the semantic difference between the words "seeing" and "looking": seeing is a sensory act, whereas looking is a cognitive one. In keeping with the contested word's status as a legal term, the difference between seeing and looking aids in formulating two new criteria. Courts may consider assessing whether disposal took place on the grounds of containment and movement; for instance, has the body been moved from one location to another and is the body being contained within another object like a bucket, a wooden box or a suitcase?
KeywordsAttempt; concealment of birth, disposal; dispose of; disposed; looking; ordinary meaning; seeing; space in language; uncompleted attempt.
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