Clarifying Vagueness In Legal Language

Accuracy is the lifeline of legal wording.As the basis of judgment,the more definite various legal provisions are,the more advantageous they are to the trial of a case.However,vagueness can be seen everywhere in legal texts,esp.in legal provisions.Vagueness is an important property of language and also a certain requirement for legal accuracy.In order to regulate various social phenomena,a large number of vague expressions are applied in legislation.But the final judicial result is determinate and exclusive.Therefore,the transition from vagueness of legal language to determination of judicial result is worth our concem.Vagueness in legal language exists everywhere.Understanding and clarifying vagueness permeates the whole process of legal activities.To some extent,the process from legislation to judiciary is also that of understanding and clarifying vagueness in legal language.In recent years, scholars and researchers in linguistic and legal fields both at home and abroad have studied vagueness in legal language from different angles and made great achievements.Ever since American scientist Lotfi A.Zadeh put forward the theory of "fuzzy sets" in 1965,treatises and papers on the study of vague language at home and abroad have been published endlessly,which sheds new light on the study of vagueness in legal language.Relevance Theory has been widely applied in various pragmatic study fields since it was first put forward by Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson in 1986.RT can be applied to understand language,which proves that this theory has persuasive interpretation of understanding language.According to Relevance Theory,(1) Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance.(2) Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.However,to the author's present knowledge,few researchers,if any,would have elaborated vagueness in legal language from the perspective of relevance.Based on the rationality and certainty of vagueness in legal language,the present dissertation investigates how vagueness in legal language can be understood and clarified during the transition from legislation to judiciary and helps achieve determination of judicial results in combination with relevant practical examples.This dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One is a general introduction explaining the motivation,scope and layout of the dissertation.Chapter Two is about literature review mainly exploring current research of vagueness in legal language and relevance theory as well as presenting the main achievements.Chapter Three and Four are the main body of this dissertation.Based on the rationality and certainty of the existence of vagueness in legal language,the present dissertation investigates how vagueness in legal language can be understood and clarified during the transition from legislation to judiciary and helps achieve determination of judicial result in combination with relevant practical examples.In Chapter Five,it is concluded that the use of vague legal language conforms to the relevance principle,the process of understanding and clarifying vagueness in legal language is also to seek optimal relevance.