ETHNOLINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE ARGUMENTATION IN LAW (‘LOST IN TRANSLATION’)

Abstract

Various publications in different fields (linguistics, sociology, philosophy and culture) have discussed the subject of the further destiny awaiting the globalised world within the context of future development of the most important human tool – the language. It is a fundamental empirical fact that Europe and the entire world have become plurilingual in all aspects and at all levels indeed. The legal and bureaucratic languages have become adopted to the extent that we use them daily regardless of how scientifically exact the topic we talk about is. The language has always been contemplated upon both by ancient and modern philosophers, political scientists, anthropologists and, naturally, linguists. Ethnolinguistics does not provide answers to all questions but it does teach us that the more we become introspective of differents views on the world, the more we get to realize our own limited understanding of the notions. Legal language argumentation was chosen as an instance for the purpose of this paper due to the fact that the law relies on the language as the fundamental means of expression as it is serves the purpose of a tool with which a concensus may be reached. All fragments of our world views serve to show how different notions include creating of linguistic patterns, and that all speech and thought patterns are only partially translatable. This is the ethnolinguisics principle whilst the quintessence of its studies is presented in the form of analysis of the ways the language enables us to create meanings in the world and to communicate meaningfully.