Implicatures within Legal Language

180 Pages·2019·1.794 MB·

by  Izabela Skoczeń

Law and Philosophy Library 127
Izabela Skoczeń
Implicatures
within Legal
Language
Law and Philosophy Library
Volume 127
Series editors
Francisco J. Laporta, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia, USA
Torben Spaak, Stockholm University, Sweden
Editorial Board
Aulis Aarnio, Secretary General of the Tampere Club, Tampere, Finland
Humberto Ávila, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Zenon Bankowski, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Paolo Comanducci, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy
Hugh Corder, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Ernesto Garzón Valdés, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
Riccaro Guastini, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy
Ho Hock Lai, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
John Kleinig, City University of New York, New York City, USA
Claudio Michelon, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Patricia Mindus, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Yasutomo Morigiwa, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan
Giovanni Battista Ratti, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy
Wojchiech Sadurski, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Horacio Spector, University of San Diego, San Diego, USA
Michel Troper, Paris Nanterre University, Nanterre, France
Carl Wellman, Washington University, St. Louis, USA
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Izabela Skoczeń
Implicatures within Legal
Language
Izabela Skoczeń
Department of Legal Theory and Jagiellonian
Centre for Law, Language and Philosophy
Jagiellonian University
Kraków, Poland
ISSN 1572-4395 ISSN 2215-0315 (electronic)
Law and Philosophy Library
ISBN 978-3-030-12531-8 ISBN 978-3-030-12532-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12532-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931925
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education
(grant number DI2012 019042). I would like to warmly thank Prof. Tomasz Gizbert-
Studnicki and Prof. Katarzyna Kijania-Placek for their invaluable comments. I
would also like to thank Prof. Francois Recanati for our helpful discussion during
my stay at the Institut Jean Nicod. My heartfelt thanks are also extended to professors
Stephen Neale, Francesca Poggi, Marcin Matczak, Jeffrey Goldsworthy and many
others for the insights and inspiration gained during conferences. I am also very
grateful to my colleagues from the Department of Legal Theory as well as Krzysztof
Posłajko and Paweł Banaś from the Institute of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian
University for their input. Finally, I would like to thank Jerzy Gabriel Wróbel, Ewa
Grzęda, Magda Brewczyńska, Agnieszka Staszek, Maria Turbasa and Anika
Zemowska for their help in unearthing interesting case law.
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 A Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Hart and Dworkin on Communication in Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 The History of Linguistic Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Some Remarks Concerning Current Interdisciplinary Approaches
to Philosophy of Language, Law and Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 The Strategic Principle and the Maxim of Selectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 Outline of the Classical Gricean Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 The Cooperative Principle and the Maxims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Conversational vs. Conventional Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4 Intention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5 Generalized and Particularized Conversational Implicatures . . . . . 25
2.6 Some Features of Conversational Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.7 Applying the Classical Gricean Project to the Legal Realm . . . . . . 27
2.7.1 The Cooperative Principle in Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.7.2 Strategic Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.7.3 The Strategic Super-Maxim of Selectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.7.4 The Clash of the Maxims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.7.5 The Strength of Implicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.7.6 Why ‘What Is Said’ Is Not Always Said? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3 Post-Gricean Implicature Theories and Their Relevance
for the Legal Realm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.1 Relevance Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.2 Relevance Theory and the Legal Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.2.1 The Amendments to the Classical Gricean Picture . . . . . . . 61
3.2.2 Why RT Cannot Be a Sufficient Theory of Legal
Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
vii
viii Contents
3.3 The Q and R Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.4 The Q and R Principles in Legal Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.5 Q and I Heuristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.6 The Canons of Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4 Propositionalism and the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.1 The Completeness of Legal Propositions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.1.1 Why Is ‘What Is Said’ Not Said? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.2 What Can a Theorist of Legal Language Learn from
the ‘Border Wars’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.2.1 The Separation of Powers Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.2.2 The Consequences of Choosing a Stance in the Debate on
Propositionalism for the Separation of Powers Principle . . . 103
4.3 Some Famous Examples of Pragmatic Enrichment in the Law . . . . 108
4.4 Baum-Levenbook’s Set of Ordered Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.5 Conclusion: Strategic Speech and Pragmatic Enrichment . . . . . . . . 115
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5 The Meaning of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.1 Intention in Natural Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.1.1 The Reductive Program of the Internalist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.1.2 The Program of the Externalist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5.2 Meaning Versus Pragmatics: Some Terminological
Clarifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.3 The Gricean Theory of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
5.4 More Internal Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5.5 More External Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.6 A Theory of Meaning for Legal Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.6.1 Grice on the Meaning of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.6.2 The Meaning of Legal Texts Is External . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.6.3 Institutional Intentions Are Not Reducible to Collective
Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.6.4 The Functionalist Account of Institutional Intentions . . . . . 152
5.6.5 Externalism in Disguise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6 The Exchange Between Legislature and Courts: Examples
of Strategic Behavior from the Polish Legal System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.2 Criminal Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.3 Civil Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Contents ix
6.3.1 Incapacitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.3.2 Oral Wills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
6.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7 General Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 A Roadmap
In 1975 Paul Grice, the famous British philosopher, published his seminal work
‘Logic and Conversation’. This work was a milestone in his effort to delimit the
fields of interest of semantics and pragmatics. Grice noticed that people usually
convey much more than just the amalgam of the meanings of the words they utter;
he labeled this surplus of meaning a conversational implicature. For instance, con-
sider the following conversation:
A: Are you hungry?
B: I have just had breakfast.
What B has said is that he has just had breakfast, but he has also conveyed some-
thing else, something that makes the two seemingly unconnected utterances very
closely related. What B has implicated is simply that he is not hungry. According to
Grice, hearers calculate ‘what is implicated’ with the use of some special rules
called maxims of conversation and the conversational principle. Grice also created
an internalist theory of meaning, claiming that it is the speaker’s intention that
determines the meaning to be conveyed.
The purpose of the present study is to propose an analytical or explanatory1 the-
ory of legal discourse in a modified Gricean paradigm. This study adopts a chrono-
logical order, meaning that it first considers implicatures as defined by Paul Grice
before considering the neo-Gricean theories of implicatures and other pragmatic
effects. By ‘other pragmatic effects’ I mean pragmatic enrichments, which are prag-
matic developments of the notion of ‘what is said’. Neo-Griceans point out that
quite often a part of a proposition decoded on the basis of what is said is not decoded
1 I purposefully refrain from using the word ‘descriptive’ since I want to avoid associations with the
descriptive-normative opposition. This is because I am tackling issues related to linguistic meaning
in the book and I want to avoid questions raised in the debate of whether meaning is normative as
this would require a separate book. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1
I. Skoczeń, Implicatures within Legal Language, Law and Philosophy
Library 127, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12532-5_1