Legal terms are usually regarded as a type of closed discourse; that is, they can exist independently without the need of resorting to other external texts. This study, via an empirical analysis of the of "ordinary residence" in the cases of foreign domestic helpers in HK as well as a discussion of other relevant cases, examines the construction, destruction and reconstruction of legal terms, and therefore unravels the temporal and spatial characteristics in the birth and evolution of legal terms. The construction of the sense of a certain legal term is of social nature, and an established sense may be deconstructed with the social development and change, which is another round of construction, and hence reconstruction. Legal Interpretation is not purely the application of approaches to interpretation but the process and product of dialogue among different social actors. This study shows that sociosemiotics can provide a strong research value in theory and interpretive force in practice to examine legal interpretation and legal methodology.
李俭. 法律术语的社会符号学阐释——以“通常居住”为例[J]. 浙江工商大学学报, 2017, 31(4): 59-65.
LI Jian. A Sociosemiotic Interpretation of Legal Terms——A Case Study on “Ordinary Residence”. Journal of Zhejing Gongshang University, 2017, 31(4): 59-65.