Review: Making Sense in Law: Linguistic, Psychological and Semiotic Perspectives
| Published date | 01 July 1999 |
| Date | 01 July 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/136571279900300306 |
| Author | Donald Nicolson |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEW
Bernard
S.
Jackson
MAKING
SENSE
IN
LAW:
LINGUISTIC,
PSYCHOLOGICAL
AND
SEMIOTIC
PERSPECTIVES
Liverpool:
Deborah
Charles
Publications
(1996)
xii
+
516pp,
£45.00/£19.95
For those
committed
to
multidisciplinary
studies
of
law
and
for those
interested in questions
of
evidence
and
proof, BernardJackson's
Making
Sense
in
Law:
Linguistics,
Psychological
and
Semiotic
Perspectives
should be a welcome
addition
to
their
bookshelves. In
this
book, we
meet
some
of
the
author's
old
semiotic friends (see Jackson, 1985
and
1988), as well as a whole
host
of
linguists
and
psychologists whose work has
potential
application to law. Since
the
semiotician Algirda Greimas clearly remains Jackson's
guru,
it
might
be
appropriate to consider
whether
Making
Sense
in
Law
upholds
the
central
ideas
of
Greimassian semiotics:
that
narratives involve a
'contract'
(the
institution
of
the
subject
through
the
establishment
of
goals
and
competences),
'performance'
(or non-performance)
of
those goals
and
'recognition'
of
that
performance (or non-performance).
The
'contract'
of
Jackson's book is to be found in
the
Preface,
where
he lays
down
three
broad
goals. The first is to 'provide asurvey
of
some
of
the
basic
theories
of
linguistics, semiotics
and
psychology,
and
their
potential
application to law' in
the
hope
that
this
will 'assist
the
teaching
of
awide
range
of
socio-legal courses
and
also prove
of
interest to
stud
ents
of
law
more
generally'. Secondly,
using
the
English
criminal
trial
as his
main
example,
Jackson seeks to 'show how
much
of
the
sense constructed in legal practice
depends
upon
the
more
general processes
of
sense
construction',
and
to
analyse
the
extent
to
which
lawyers do make sense
oflaw
and
how
their
sense
construction
differs from
that
oflay
persons who come
into
contact
with
law.
Thirdly, Jackson seeks to persuade
the
reader
that
asynthesis
of
semiotics,
psychology
and
linguistics leads to a
richer
analysis
of
substantive problems
of
sense
construction
than
anyone
single discipline
and
that
this
synthesis
can
be achieved
through
Greimassian semiotics.
204
THE
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
OF
EVIDENCE
&
PROOF
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