Anne Wagner

Law, culture and visual studies

This reference work:- Provides the only available comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics- Highlights the interdisciplinary nature of legal visual semiotics- Fills the gap between law, semiotics and visualityThe proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward.

Visual Rhetoric as “A Space-in-Between”: Semiotic Account of French Official Presidential Photographs

This chapter deals with the concept of the French national spirit for the construction of the national identity of France. Some of the most typical French official presidential photographs reveal a hidden discourse, a ‘Space-in-between’. These official photographs are part of French history and are also displayed in town halls even though there is no compulsory obligation to do so. However, some legal regulations have to be respected when shooting their portraits, but artists are also free to adapt their styles owing to each President’s will. Studying the visual and hidden discursive implications sheds light on semiotic, philosophical, and legal issues, as well as impacts on our legal culture, tradition and system. Taking into account space and time, the chapter proposes a reflection on the function, role, and limits of these visual and discursive representations, as well as impacts, recognitions and obligations deriving from them.

La sémiotique juridique verbale et nonverbale comme stratégie de communication du droit: Signs, symbols, and meanings in law

Abstract Law exposes the variety and complexity of legal language. The mastery of the cultural and spatio-temporal artefacts is thus necessary to understand the social institutions of a country. Their mode of production may be considered as creating “forms of life,” “language games,” or “institutional practices of the interpreting community.”

Multiple historical and social layers of interpretation of marital rape in England

Abstract This paper sets out to examine the way in which legal reasoning constructed marital rape and eventually officially recognized it after centuries of men’s ascendency over women. Understanding the multiple layers requires cultural and historical awareness of the traditional concept of “marriage” and the practice of religion as well as the very different conditions in which marital rape was envisaged. The main contention of this paper is to show that legal knowledge derives from a patriarchal tradition where the processing of marital abuse and rape hovered between cultural and subjective realities contrary to objective rationality.

Materialization in Legal Communication in the Transfering Process

Legal discourse is in constant maturation. Legal translatability requires a high degree of both the source and target languages and of their respective institutions. Materialization is in place when adjustments and ‘deterritorialization’ (Wagner, J Civil Law Stud, forthcoming, 2016; Legrand, Issues in the translatability of law. In Bermann S, Wood M (eds) Nation, language, and the ethics of translation. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp 30–50, 2005) have found a way, a ‘third space’ (Wagner, J Civil Law Stud, forthcoming, 2016) to fit the target language in the translatability process, though the full conceptual, societal and/or historical loads are not explicitly retained from their original source and may traverse linguistic barriers.

Communication and culture mediation techniques in jurilinguistics

Communication means transferring information from one culture to another. This transfer of information leads to the conceptualization of a common and significant framework in legal discourse, especially in the translation, interpretation, and communication fields. Likewise, there is an increasing development and diversification of domain-specific knowledge across nations and cultures: “Culture . . . derives from historical experience – so do the forms that culture embraces, such as legal rules. It would be absurdly reductionist to see a rule simply as a rule” (Legrand 1996: 56). As a consequence, legal specialists in different subfields act as language and culture mediators to convey the correct contents of utterances and/or speech acts among their communities or for their clients. Jorge Luis Borges (1976) talks about a garden of forking paths, which means that communication is like a multistage dynamic (Wagner 2005) where mechanisms of transfer, of importation from one culture to another have to be fairly analyzed. The notion of importation and transfer does not only relate to the translation field but also to verbal and written speech. Active and collaborative work is then necessary to mediate, decide, and analyze under real constraints with cultural challenges. Accordingly, decision-making needs to elaborate multiple and viable solutions to problems that emerge naturally from ordinary language, and so to