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Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
“Ordinary Language” as Legal Fiction
Professor Christopher Hutton
School of English, The University of Hong Kong
Date: March 20, 2018 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Venue: Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiry: (852) 3917-5772, ihss@hku.hk
Abstract
Law can be presented as an ‘artifact’, ‘a system of regulations which depends upon precise definitions’, and a decision-making process which requires ‘Yes or No answers’ (Ormrod 1972: 78). In this sense law operates with fictional or artificial categories that reflect its need for internal, systemic coherence, including a requirement for ‘bright-line’ boundaries between categories. A set of fascinating questions arise when law is confronted with mundane categories of the social world, e.g. sandwich, biscuit, vegetable, building, computer, as well as with socially and ideologically contested terms, such as family, parent, man, woman, marriage, animal, person. These familiar categories are Janus-faced within legal culture, in that they must cohere with the inner interpretative purposes of law, yet also retain some plausible referential ties beyond law. One way that judges frame their linguistic and definitional intuitions is in terms of ‘ordinary language’, a category that can be coopted as part of a wider argument that law is, to a significant degree, grounded in the everyday linguistic knowledge of ordinary speakers. Law, so the argument goes, is in part knowable to those who are subject to it. This talk argues that the category ‘ordinary language’ is a legal fiction ‘hiding in plain sight’, one that sustains common law adjudication.
About the Speaker
Christopher Hutton is Chair Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a BA in Modern Languages (1980) and a DPhil in General Linguistics from the University of Oxford (1988), an MA in Linguistics and Yiddish Studies from Columbia University (1985), and an LLB from Manchester Metropolitan University (2008). His research concerns the history of linguistics, in particular the relationship between linguistics and race theory. In the past decade he has been working on the politics of language and interpretation in the context of the law. His publications include Linguistics and the Third Reich (Routledge, 1999), Race and the Third Reich (Polity Press, 2005), Word Meaning and Legal Interpretation (Palgrave, 2014), and Signs, Meaning and Experience (with Adrian Pablé, de Gruyter, 2015).
Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
“Ordinary Language” as Legal Fiction
Professor Christopher Hutton
School of English, The University of Hong Kong
Date: March 20, 2018 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Venue: Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiry: (852) 3917-5772, ihss@hku.hk
Abstract
Law can be presented as an ‘artifact’, ‘a system of regulations which depends upon precise definitions’, and a decision-making process which requires ‘Yes or No answers’ (Ormrod 1972: 78). In this sense law operates with fictional or artificial categories that reflect its need for internal, systemic coherence, including a requirement for ‘bright-line’ boundaries between categories. A set of fascinating questions arise when law is confronted with mundane categories of the social world, e.g. sandwich, biscuit, vegetable, building, computer, as well as with socially and ideologically contested terms, such as family, parent, man, woman, marriage, animal, person. These familiar categories are Janus-faced within legal culture, in that they must cohere with the inner interpretative purposes of law, yet also retain some plausible referential ties beyond law. One way that judges frame their linguistic and definitional intuitions is in terms of ‘ordinary language’, a category that can be coopted as part of a wider argument that law is, to a significant degree, grounded in the everyday linguistic knowledge of ordinary speakers. Law, so the argument goes, is in part knowable to those who are subject to it. This talk argues that the category ‘ordinary language’ is a legal fiction ‘hiding in plain sight’, one that sustains common law adjudication.
About the Speaker
Christopher Hutton is Chair Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a BA in Modern Languages (1980) and a DPhil in General Linguistics from the University of Oxford (1988), an MA in Linguistics and Yiddish Studies from Columbia University (1985), and an LLB from Manchester Metropolitan University (2008). His research concerns the history of linguistics, in particular the relationship between linguistics and race theory. In the past decade he has been working on the politics of language and interpretation in the context of the law. His publications include Linguistics and the Third Reich (Routledge, 1999), Race and the Third Reich (Polity Press, 2005), Word Meaning and Legal Interpretation (Palgrave, 2014), and Signs, Meaning and Experience (with Adrian Pablé, de Gruyter, 2015).
Title:
“Ordinary Language” as Legal Fiction
Speaker:
Professor Christopher Hutton (Chair Professor, School of English, The University of Hong Kong)
Date:
March 20, 2018
Time:
12:00 nn – 1:00 pm
Venue:
Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Language:
English
Enquiry:
(Tel) (852) 3917-5772
(Email) ihss@hku.hk
Law can be presented as an “artifact”, “a system of regulations which depends upon precise definitions”, and a decision-making process which requires “Yes or No answers” (Ormrod 1972: 78). In this sense law operates with fictional or artificial categories that reflect its need for internal, systemic coherence, including a requirement for “bright-line” boundaries between categories. A set of fascinating questions arise when law is confronted with mundane categories of the social world, e.g. sandwich, biscuit, vegetable, building, computer, as well as with socially and ideologically contested terms, such as family, parent, man, woman, marriage, animal, person. These familiar categories are Janus-faced within legal culture, in that they must cohere with the inner interpretative purposes of law, yet also retain some plausible referential ties beyond law. One way that judges frame their linguistic and definitional intuitions is in terms of “ordinary language”, a category that can be coopted as part of a wider argument that law is, to a significant degree, grounded in the everyday linguistic knowledge of ordinary speakers. Law, so the argument goes, is in part knowable to those who are subject to it. This talk argues that the category “ordinary language” is a legal fiction “hiding in plain sight”, one that sustains common law adjudication.
Christopher Hutton is Chair Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a BA in Modern Languages (1980) and a DPhil in General Linguistics from the University of Oxford (1988), an MA in Linguistics and Yiddish Studies from Columbia University (1985), and an LLB from Manchester Metropolitan University (2008). His research concerns the history of linguistics, in particular the relationship between linguistics and race theory. In the past decade he has been working on the politics of language and interpretation in the context of the law. His publications include Linguistics and the Third Reich (Routledge, 1999), Race and the Third Reich (Polity Press, 2005), Word Meaning and Legal Interpretation (Palgrave, 2014), and Signs, Meaning and Experience (with Adrian Pablé, de Gruyter, 2015).
