An Introduction to Magical Legal Pragmatics

Please note this is a hybrid event, taking place at Aston University and online

Abstract:

Legal language is a “second-order” semiotic system (Barthes 2009) built upon the first-order system of a given language’s standard variety. The resultant polysemy, particularly when combined with the subtle-yet-significant differences in purpose of legal, lay, and linguistic analyses of language (Griffin 2025), means that any attempt to identify the meaning of a given legal text must grapple with a number of epistemological issues, including whether such a text can even have a definitive reading in the first place. This presentation therefore suggests that naive linguistic analyses of legal language (i.e. those performed by individuals without relevant legal training) should approach the texts in question as if they were instances of ritual magic practice. This approach, it is argued, will be beneficial both because the resultant decontextualization will help mitigate the chance of interpretive errors stemming from inaccurate presumptions of pragmatic familiarity and because such an approach is itself a legitimate way of reading legal texts (Heffer 2013; Izutsu 2012). After exploring the semiotic and pragmatic overlap between law and magic, this paper will demonstrate the utility of the proposed heuristic with examples drawn from history, popular culture, and forensic linguistic casework.

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Host or Publisher Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics