New Insights Into the Semantics of Legal Concepts and the Legal Dictionary
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TERMINOLOGY and LEXICOGRAPHY B a j c i ´c RESEARCH and PRACTICE 17 and the Legal Dictionary Legal the and Martina Semantics of Legal Concepts Concepts Legal of Semantics New Insights into the the into Insights New John Benjamins Publishing Company Publishing Benjamins John New Insights into the Semantics of Legal Concepts and the Legal Dictionary Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice (TLRP) issn 1388-8455 Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice aims to provide in-depth studies and background information pertaining to Lexicography and Terminology. General works include philosophical, historical, theoretical, computational and cognitive approaches. Other works focus on structures for purpose- and domain-specific compilation (LSP), dictionary design, and training. The series includes monographs, state-of-the-art volumes and course books in the English language. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see www.benjamins.com/catalog/tlrp Editors Marie-Claude L’ Homme Kyo Kageura University of Montreal University of Tokyo Volume 17 New Insights into the Semantics of Legal Concepts and the Legal Dictionary by Martina Bajčić New Insights into the Semantics of Legal Concepts and the Legal Dictionary Martina Bajčić University of Rijeka John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/tlrp.17 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2016053197 (print) / 2016055071 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 2341 8 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6600 2 (e-book) © 2017 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents List of figures ix List of tables x List of abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Terms, concepts and other conundrums 7 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 From Google to a General Theory of Terminology 8 1.2.1 Wüster’s idealized vision of terminology 11 1.2.2 A terminological clarification 12 1.3 Different takes on terminology and terminology work 14 1.4 Logical and ontological relationships vs. legal reasoning 16 1.4.1 Logical relationships 17 1.4.2 Ontological relationships 17 1.5 The concept vs. term quandary 18 1.5.1 Legal vs. linguistic conceptualization 20 1.6 Recent terminology theories 22 1.7 Summary 24 Chapter 2 Investigating legal concepts, language and the law 27 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 Researching specialized languages 28 2.2.1 Legal scholars and the study of language 31 2.3 The dichotomy between specialized and general language: The fiction of legal language 32 2.4 What language and the law have in common 36 2.5 Legal concepts 39 2.5.1 Types of legal concepts 40 2.5.2 Determinate and indeterminate legal concepts 44 2.5.3 Coping with indeterminate legal concepts in practice 50 vi Table of contents 2.6 Polysemous legal terms 52 2.6.1 Implications of the cognitive shift for resolving polysemy 55 2.6.2 Polysemy in the EU context 56 2.7 Summary 58 Chapter 3 (How) Do courts do things with words? 61 3.1 Introduction 61 3.2 The linguistic importance of case-law reasoning 61 3.3 Interpretation as a perennial source of legal difficulty 62 3.4 General methods of legal interpretation 68 3.4.1 Statutory interpretation methods implemented by U.S. Courts 70 3.4.2 The role of the context in legal interpretation or ‘anything goes’ 74 3.5 Summary 78 Chapter 4 Understanding EU legal concepts 79 4.1 Introduction 79 4.2 Conceptual autonomy 79 4.3 Conceptualization of EU legal concepts 80 4.3.1 Difference in conceptualization 80 4.3.2 The CJEU’s case-to-case approach 81 4.4 Summary 89 Chapter 5 Multilingualism and EU legal concepts 91 5.1 Introduction 91 5.2 The multilingual character of EU law 91 5.2.1 The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 92 5.2.2 Official and working language 93 5.2.3 Problems posed by multilingualism in practice 94 5.2.4 The CJEU’s approaches to reconciling divergent language versions 95 5.3 A summary of findings 104 5.3.1 What will the future bring? 105 Table of contents vii Chapter 6 EU legal translation and challenges for the dictionary: Incorporating legal translation into dictionary making 107 6.1 Introduction 107 6.2 Legal translation 108 6.2.1 Legal texts 110 6.2.2 Equivalence: A mission impossible 111 6.2.3 Conceptual analysis as the comparative-law approach to legal translation 112 6.3 Some challenges posed by legal translation to the legal dictionary 115 6.3.1 Analysis of lexicographic treatment of legal terms 119 6.3.2 Coping with different types of equivalence in a legal dictionary 125 6.4 Choosing the right approach to legal translation in the EU context 129 6.4.1 Using functional equivalents when translating EU legal concepts 131 6.5 Practical guidelines for legal translators working in the EU 132 6.6 Summary 134 Chapter 7 Multilingual legal dictionaries: Towards a termontological dictionary of EU law 137 7.1 Introduction 137 7.2 Reinventing the dictionary 137 7.2.1 The future of legal dictionaries: Going digital and cognitive 140 7.3 The role of theory in the making of dictionaries 142 7.3.1 Terminography 142 7.3.2 Domains 143 7.4 The role of definitions in a legal dictionary 145 7.4.1 Redefining the role of legal definitions 148 7.4.2 The problems of defining and categorizing EU legal concepts 150 7.4.3 Subject-field classification: Demarcation of EU law 151 7.5 Filling a gap in legal lexicography 157 7.5.1 Prototype giveth, terminography taketh 157 7.5.2 Teleological definitions 160 7.6 Integrating extralinguistic information into the dictionary 162 7.6.1 Parts of the ontological structure 166 7.7 Summary 167 viii Table of contents Chapter 8 Methodology for the making of a termontological dictionary 169 8.1 Introduction 169 8.2 Termontographic methodology 169 8.2.1 Search phase 172 8.2.2 Information-gathering phase 173 8.2.3 Refinement phase 181 8.2.4 Teleological definitions of indeterminate legal concepts 182 8.3 Dictionary display of indeterminate EU law concepts 186 8.3.1 Parent company 186 8.3.2 Subsidiary company 188 8.3.3 Company of a Member State 188 8.3.4 Company of a Member State: Different parts 190 8.3.5 Wholly artificial arrangement 190 8.3.6 Merger 192 8.4 Verification phase 194 8.5 Form of the termontological dictionary: Go digital or perish 195 Chapter 9 Concluding remarks and directions for future research 197 9.1 Digitalisation and customized lexicography 198 Bibliography 201 Appendix 1 215 a. Legislative acts: 215 b. Case law: 216 c. Textbooks: 217 Appendix 2 219 a. Legislative acts: 219 b. Books and articles: 219 Subject index 221 List of figures Figure 1. Different applications of the discipline of terminology 10 Figure 2. Example of LOIS 125 Figure 3. Different purposes of worker in EU law 154 Figure 4. Subordinate concepts of the category of worker 155 Figure 5. Different members of the category mother 161 Figure 6. Ontological categories in a dictionary of EU law 171 List of tables Table 1. Comparison of damages, Schadensersatz and naknada štete 118 Table 2. Aligned English, German and Croatian terms 177 List of abbreviations bgb Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (German iate InterActive Terminology for Europe Civil Code) cca Croatian Competition Act it Italian ccpa Croatian Civil Procedure Act htsus Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States ccpa1 Croatian Criminal Procedure Act gtt General Terminology Theory cesl Proposal for a Common European lois Lexical Ontologies for Legal Sales Law Information Society cjeu Court of Justice of the European lsp Language(s) for Specific Purpose Union dcfr Draft Common Frame of Reference lts Legal Taxonomy Syllabus de German nl Dutch ec European Community rc related concept echr European Convention on Human sc starting concept Rights ecr European Court Reports sf subfield ecthr European Court of Human Rights sl Slovene eec European Economic Community sv Swedish en English teu Treaty on European Union es Spanish tfeu Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union eu European Union unesco The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation fr French vclt Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Introduction The 21st century is marked by interdisciplinarity. Worn-out misconceptions about linear approaches and clear-cut scientific domains have been cleared away, mak- ing room for cross-disciplinary approaches drawing on two or more different do- mains. The resulting interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity enable a particular phenomenon to be untangled from different perspectives, which in turn leads to a deeper appreciation of the phenomenon and streamlines the scientific process more effectively. While some disciplines were quick to reap the benefits of ap- plying interdisciplinary approaches, others are still waiting to make a leap into interdisciplinarity. As regards lexicography, it is still in a transitional period, albeit the academic community has long realised that lexicography should not be rel- egated to applied linguistics or limited to linguistics only. This claim is echoed by contemporary lexicography scholars Sandro Nielsen and Sven Tarp (2009: IX-XI) who acknowledge that academics have started to develop “general and specific theoretical principles that could explain the nature of dictionaries and help lexi- cographers to develop new and improved dictionaries“, however, lexicography still needs to find its place in the research world.