Law from a pragmatic-linguistic perspective

Abstract

Breaking with already consolidated thought structures is not easy. Philosophy of language, especially in the contemporary context, seems to have used a heavy sledgehammer to demolish the stabilized foundations of traditional language, leaving sketches of a new linguistic aesthetics that philosophy and law will follow later. The present work aims to recover, in general but orderly terms, the evolution of philosophical reflection on language within the scope of Western thought. With this, we seek to combat some dogmas consolidated in the philosophical tradition. Firstly, we criticize the current idea that knowledge is learned without language by reason and only later communicated to others, as if language were a mere secondary instrument of knowledge.  Secondly, the idea that the main or exclusive function of language is to designate things in the world is rejected. At this point, drawing on Wittgenstein, it is pointed out that linguistic theories mistakenly assumed a reductionist reading of the role of language. Thirdly, it is highlighted that the world and reality do not exist independent of language. There is only the world in language. This is the fundamental point that touches on the edifice of contemporary thought, transferring the transcendental philosophy that had subsidized the thematization of knowledge (epistemology) to language, in what is conventionally called a pragmatic-linguistic turnaround. The work is still the result of ongoing research, which makes it, in this first version, inconclusive regarding the objective of the research, which is to evaluate the impacts of linguistic pragmatics on law. However, an effort is made to present the points mentioned above.