Linguistics for legal interpretation

Abstract

Linguistics for Legal Interpretation is a language resource for scholars and practitioners of law who engage and work with statutory interpretation. It draws on lexical semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics to both understand and solve language challenges central to the interpretation effort. In addition, this book offers best practice guidelines for dictionary use as well as an introduction to corpus linguistic methods to assist legal interpreters in determining either ordinary or technical meaning. The book illustrates the various language tools and devices by applying them to case law and legislation, and it does so in an accessible style of writing. Terrence R Carney is Associate Professor of Afrikaans Linguistics at the University of South Africa. He specialises in the language of law.