Definition in Theory and Practice: Language, Lexicography and the Law

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2009), "Definition in Theory and Practice: Language, Lexicography and the Law", Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 5, pp. 396-397. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910961855

Information is like lexicography and the law in that definitions matter most if not all of the time. There is an understandable urge to define things and notions accurately, stipulatively, denotatively (not just connotatively), and base definitions on essential properties or characteristics. This Baconian or formalistic approach is often referred to as prescriptivism in the sense that terms and concepts and propositions can be called true or false, and that they follow and instantiate formal rules of syntax and meaning. Under such a dispensation, there are semantic rules for assigning names to objects (nominalism), while formalism itself encompasses symbolic and notational ways of doing this as well (think of Russell and Whitehead).

Roy Harris and Christopher Hutton approach things differently, arguing that “it proves impossible to mount a theoretically convincing case for semantic determinacy either in the domain or lexicography or in that of law” (pp. 220‐221). Their view is what they call integrationist, variously defined throughout Definition in Theory and Practice as accommodating usage and context, distinctions between real and ostensive meanings, divergent interpretations (“various minds”) by lay and specialist speakers, performative and normative applications (widely relevant to the law), and placing importance on sign – and code‐driven understandings of language and communication. Harris has published earlier books on such themes.

The historiographic shift in “definition” work from essentialism (think of Plato on justice and piety for instance) through properties and usage (with Locke and others) and through prescriptivism to pragmatic‐contextual approaches is reflected by the approach the authors here take. They explain their position and cite various sceptics along the way like Fodor (cognition reveals diversity) and Frege (logic is not thinking), Quine (the concept of “red” can vary) and Austin (performatives matter, above all for professional rules and norms).

The authors (Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Oxford and Hutton Head of the English Department at the University of Hong Kong) argue that an integrationist analysis of two admittedly prescriptivist fields – lexicography and the law – reveals several important limitations. Among them lie reliance on the reocentric (thing‐centred) relationality between words and things, the introvertedly unhelpful historical approach taken by dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary (later editors like Burchfield are accused of prescriptivism), and the “separate domain” rule‐centredness of legal decisions (in case law, for example) and statutory interpretation. “Modern lexicography has inherited from the nineteenth‐century extremely muddled concepts of meaning and definition” (p. 129), they say, typically.

This should provoke many of us, familiar with the historical and etymological approach of the OED, to revisit its well‐known approach and the claims it is based upon. The authors here suggest that knowing classical or Victorian meanings gets in the way of answering semantic questions and act as obstacles to meaning. Among the examples they cite are “liberty” and “freedom” and their argument is beguiling. Murray, the first editor of the OED, held that words have “proper meanings”, accepting that they also undergo changes through time. Aristotle too suggested that there are such things as real definitions (the start of lexical/semantic essentialism perhaps). How well the case emerges will depend on the reader of this scholarly monograph. It is clearly a work intended for the academic and specialist shelves.

It also says it will be of interest “to academics researching lexicography, semantics and the intersection of linguistics and jurisprudence” (back cover blurb). I really wonder. I can see the appeal to anyone interested in linguistics and semantics, but the arguments as applied to lexicography will be familiar, if not over‐familiar, to anyone who knows the lexicography field well and doubts will almost certainly surface about the plausibility of language folk theorizing there.

In the legal context the intervention is even less convincing. It is trite to revisit legal interpretation from such a lay perspective when, within the legal field itself, there are numerous authoritative guides. Describing Lord Denning's clear‐thinking is all very well, and the observation that in the law words can be used in many ways (they cite “vehicle” and “enterprise” from UK and US cases) is undeniable, but this adds very little to any legal understanding of understanding, and nothing at all to an understanding of jurisprudence. It might be useful here to reflect on, say, Posner's legal pragmatism and to pick up on where such language authentically embeds itself, dialectically, in forms of “lay” (their word) communication (those signs and codes) such as where the media comment on the law (the autopoeisis of actual and semantic relationships between the media and the law is an exciting field of current research).

The final chapter tries to round things off and sum things up, rehearsing the integrationist argument. By then the book has not made its case for either lexicography or law, and even here it falters with what could have been a really promising analysis of reference and referentiality. So key is this in and for definition that I am amazed it gets so little so late. Then add to that another important concept, that of relevance, critical I would have thought for an understanding of context‐based explanation of meaning. Integrate the real/ostensive, denotative/connotative, performative and norm‐making, lay and specialist, and signs/code communication model, and then a case would have really been made to convince the various reader constituencies the book claims to address. A book that looks impressive but fails to deliver. It has little for the information specialist.