General aspects of frame approaches in connection with terms

The central characteristic of frame approaches is the attempt to coordinate the description of (lexical) meaning with what we know about the mind and its structures. In other words, the idea is to blur the boundaries between the traditional concept of lexical meaning and more encompassing knowledge structures actually held by language users: “Frame Semantics … is based on the assumption that the meanings of lexical units … are constructed in relation to background knowledge, whose structure can be analysed in terms of semantic frames” (L’Homme, Robichaud, and Subirats 2014L’Homme, Marie-Claude, Benoît Robichaud, and Carlos Subirats 2014 “Discovering frames in specialized domains.” In Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), 1364–1371. Reykjavik: European Language Resources Association., 1365). Through blurring this boundary, connections between more knowledge-driven approaches (concentrating upon the structure of the knowledge of a specialist field) and more lexicon-driven approaches to the description of terms and their meaning are possible (L’Homme 2018L’Homme, Marie-Claude 2018 “Maintaining the balance between knowledge and the lexicon in terminology: a methodology based on frame semantics.” Lexicography 4(1):3–21. , 4). In this way, bridges may be built between what is traditionally termed lexical meaning, on the one hand, and the description of background knowledge relevant for textual understanding be it linguistic or extra-linguistic (U-relevant knowledge, cf. above), on the other. The idea is to avoid the concentration upon one perspective and thus to strike a balance between a focus on providing answers to lexicon-driven questions as well as to knowledge-driven questions (L’Homme 2018L’Homme, Marie-Claude 2018 “Maintaining the balance between knowledge and the lexicon in terminology: a methodology based on frame semantics.” Lexicography 4(1):3–21. , 6). Lexicon-driven questions depart from the utterance perspective (e.g. what does the word ‘equity’ mean in an English legal context, what words collocate with it?), whereas knowledge-driven questions depart from the need for insight into the discipline (e.g. what are the characteristics for applying the legal figure ‘equity’ in English law in adjudication?).

That the frame approach is looking for a balance between different approaches is for instance visible in the fact that the lexical perspective is not privileged in the meaning description. Searches may depart from words (what does the word mean?) or from disciplinary concepts (what words are connected to the same frame?). Hence, analysers may still be looking for the meaning related to a word. However, they do not presuppose that this meaning is stored in isolation in the knowledge reservoir of individuals. Instead, it may be generated by collecting the knowledge units evoked by a lexical unit, and different lexical units may evoke (elements of) the same frame.

Conceptually coordinating meaning with insights into the structuring of the mind implies that a multi-dimensional structure is relevant, as knowledge is organized in associative networks in memory based on spreading activation (McClelland and Rumelhart 1985McClelland, James L. and David E. Rumelhart 1985 “Distributed memory and the representation of general and specific information.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 114(2):159–188. ). In such networks, word meanings are combinations of knowledge from different dimensions with relevance for the use of the word in a specific context. Seen from the point of view of the content of the frame, the frame is also a unit of organization that binds together lexical units connected to each other by experience or by their belonging to the same part of for instance specialized legal knowledge or expert action (Engberg 2009bEngberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. ; Pimentel 2015Pimentel, Janine 2015 “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Henrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 427–450. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 431). Since Bartlett (1932)Bartlett, Frederic C. 1932 Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. London: Cambridge University Press., such structures presumed to be the building blocks of memory have been called schemas. A frame may be seen as a type of schema (Kann and Inderelst 2018Kann, Christoph and Lars Inderelst 2018 “Gibt es eine einheitliche Frame-Konzeption? Historisch-systematische Perspektiven.” In Frames interdisziplinär: Modelle, Anwendungsfelder, Methoden, edited by Alexander Ziem, Lars Inderelst and Detmer Wulf, 25–68. Düssseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press. , 60), containing knowledge elements describing situations evoked by lexical units in an abstract format (L’Homme 2018L’Homme, Marie-Claude 2018 “Maintaining the balance between knowledge and the lexicon in terminology: a methodology based on frame semantics.” Lexicography 4(1):3–21. , 8). Furthermore, frames may be joined into scenarios, thus modelling larger parts of the actual knowledge of disciplinary specialists (L’Homme 2018L’Homme, Marie-Claude 2018 “Maintaining the balance between knowledge and the lexicon in terminology: a methodology based on frame semantics.” Lexicography 4(1):3–21. , 9). Following the concept of knowledge as organized in schemas, the general frame approach to structuring knowledge is to work with a combination of slots and fillers (Barsalou 1992Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1992 “Frames, Concepts, and Conceptual Fields.” In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts. New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization, edited by Adrienne Lehrer and Eva Feder Kittay, 21–74. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.; Busse 2012Busse, Dietrich 2012 Frame-Semantik. Ein Kompendium. Berlin: de Gruyter. ; Fillmore 1982Fillmore, Charles J. 1982 “Frame Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, edited by Linguistic Society of Korea, 111–137. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company.; Ziem 2014Ziem, Alexander 2014 Frames of Understanding in Text and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). Slots (called ‘Frame Elements’ in Frame Semantics) are dimensions, according to which the meaning of a term is organized, i.e., the building blocks of the structure of the knowledge which the word evokes. These slots are typically related to the predicate structure(s) to which the investigated terminological units contribute when used in texts (actors, objects, instruments …). In this way, the slot structure does not only tell us something about the core declarative knowledge traditionally contained in terminological definitions. It also includes elements with relevance for the combination of words in texts in order to depict special domain situations. In accordance with the tenets of cognitive linguistics, i.e., what was above called semanticizing linguistic relations, this is the way in which a frame approach to terminology blurs the boundaries between knowledge-driven and lexicon-driven interests in terms. Fillers, on their part, are the standard knowledge chunks used to characterize the term from the point of view of a specific dimension. Hence, the fillers represent the full U-relevant knowledge (not only the declarative knowledge) typically connected to a term by the members of the legal community, whereas the slots represent the standard way of structuring this knowledge. For instance, the frame related to the concept of criminal liability of corporations in US law can be modelled using slots like characteristic elements, relevance for society, related concepts, and specific theories, to name some (Engberg 2009bEngberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. , 132). Fillers would then be the content typically connected to the slots, like deterrence as an aspect of the slot relevance for society that is often mentioned when the concept of criminal liability appears in disciplinary communication (Engberg 2009bEngberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. , 134).

Frame approaches to (legal) terminology and terminography

In connection with legal terminology and knowledge, frame approaches have been used especially for two types of purposes: as a basis for constructing legal terminological resources and as a way of representing the knowledge behind legal texts for more discourse analytical purposes. The two approaches are not radically different, but for ease of explanation they are distinguished here.

Frame approaches for legal terminological resources

In the terms introduced in the previous section, the traditional approach to constructing legal terminological resources has been more knowledge driven than lexicon driven, although at least translators would actually benefit from a greater focus on information about the more linguistic aspects of this knowledge (Pimentel 2015Pimentel, Janine 2015 “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Henrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 427–450. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 430). Consequently, there has been a drive to develop the theoretical basis of legal terminology towards being more lexically driven. An important step was to abandon the idea of terms as mere pointers to knowledge and instead see them as linguistic units with all derived characteristics (Cabré 1999Cabré, M. Teresa 1999 Terminology: theory, methods and applications [Reprint, Original title: <<La>> terminolgia. La teoria, els mètodes, les aplicacions 1992] Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). This has led to three high-profiled approaches, which are presented in what follows.

In the first approach, the so-called lexical semantic approach to terminology (L’Homme 2019L’Homme, Marie-Claude 2019 Lexical semantics for terminology: An Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), the idea is to create terminological resources based on Fillmore’s FrameNet approach (Fillmore, Johnson, and Petruck 2003Fillmore, Charles J., Christopher R. Johnson, and Miriam R. L. Petruck 2003 “Background to FrameNet.” International Journal of Lexicography 16(3):235–250. ). The aim is to gather and present information in a systematic way with a view to creating resources that are optimally lexicon oriented. In the field of legal communication, Janine Pimentel has been the central researcher working with this approach (Pimentel 2012Pimentel, Janine 2012 “Identifying equivalents of specialized verbs in a bilingual comparable corpus of judgments: A frame-based methodology.” In Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’12), 1791–1798. Istanbul: European Language Resources Association., 2013Pimentel, Janine 2013 “Methodological bases for assigning terminological equivalents.” Terminology 19(2):237–257. , 2015Pimentel, Janine 2015 “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Henrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 427–450. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). Terms are basically seen as lexical elements that are used in specialized settings and with restrictions on their interpretation. Hence, the representation of their meaning may depart from descriptions in FrameNet, which intend to give frame-structured representations of lexical meaning in general language, i.e., representing the non-specialized meaning. Lexical units to be included in the resource are described by attributing to them a role in existing frames that are then, if necessary, specified in accordance with the specificity of the legal discipline (Pimentel 2015Pimentel, Janine 2015 “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Henrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 427–450. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 432–433). The basis of the attribution is studies of relevant corpora, hence allowing the terminologist to not only concentrate on nouns, but also to give relevant attention to the verbs. Exactly the frame as an instrument of representation with its aim of representing elements involved in actions allows verbs to acquire their relevant role in understanding and formulating legal texts.

The second high-profiled approach to using cognitive linguistic insights to creating terminological resources is Frame-Based Terminology (Faber 2012Faber, Pamela ed. 2012 A Cognitive Linguistics View of Terminology and Specialized Language. Berlin: de Gruyter. , 2015Faber, Pamela 2015 “Frames as a framework for terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Henrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 14–33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). Specific applications to the field of law are found in Peruzzo (2014)Peruzzo, Katia 2014 “Term extraction and management based on event templates: An empirical study on an EU corpus.” Terminology 20(2):151–170. and Faber and Reimerink (2019)Faber, Pamela and Arianne Reimerink 2019 “Framing terminology in legal translation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 4(1):15–46. . Here the idea of predications as the basis not only of textual utterances, but also of structuring representations of knowledge is found again. The approach is a specification and further development of the general approach to the linguistic description of language called Lexical Grammar Model (Faber and Mairal 1999Faber, Pamela and Ricardo Mairal 1999 Constructing a lexicon of English verbs. Berlin: de Gruyter. ). The frame type ‘event templates’ is central, similar to the approach by L’Homme (Faber and Reimerink 2019Faber, Pamela and Arianne Reimerink 2019 “Framing terminology in legal translation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 4(1):15–46. , 16; Peruzzo 2014Peruzzo, Katia 2014 “Term extraction and management based on event templates: An empirical study on an EU corpus.” Terminology 20(2):151–170., 157). This choice of frame type supports a focus in the knowledge representations on verbs, which are seen as the central terms in the legal field with its emphasis upon actions in the real world (Faber and Reimerink 2019Faber, Pamela and Arianne Reimerink 2019 “Framing terminology in legal translation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 4(1):15–46. , 20). In this approach, the ambition to present detailed descriptions in accordance with general-language theories plays a prominent role. Hence, the approach works with a distinction between the internal structuring of concepts in accordance with a general system (Pustejovsky’s qualia roles that represent the semantic structure of the lexical meaning in order to understand the emergence of compositional default meaning when words are used in sentences and texts, Pustejovsky 1995Pustejovsky, James 1995 The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.), and an external structuring according to general types of relations that represent the relations of a concept to other concepts. Apart from bringing Frame-Based Terminology closer to general linguistics beyond the field of lexical semantics, it also reveals an ambition to make representations of language-specific legal terms as little language-specific as possible. This is a difference not in kind, but in degree when comparing the approach to the lexical semantic approach to terminology, but it appears to play a major role in Frame-Based Terminology, probably in order to contribute not only to research in terminology, but also in general language. Furthermore, the orientation towards a broader linguistic theory is also connected to the ambition of creating knowledge bases that may be used not only by humans, but also by computers.

Finally, a third approach is relevant here, although it does not work directly with the concept of frame, namely, the so-called ‘Sociocognitive Terminology’ linked to the method of ‘Termontography’ as a way of representing its result (Kerremans, Temmerman, and De Baer 2008Kerremans, Koen, Rita Temmerman, and Peter De Baer 2008 “Construing domain knowledge via terminological understanding.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 7:177–191. ; Temmerman 2000Temmerman, Rita 2000 Towards New Ways of Terminology Description. The Sociocognitive Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2007Temmerman, Rita 2007 “Approaches to terminology. Now that the dust has settled …” Synaps 20:27–36.). Like in the approaches by L’Homme and Faber, the basic motivation is to construct efficient and relevantly structured knowledge representations in the form of resources for understanding and for translating specialized texts. The approach should be mentioned here, because it is also based upon a cognitive view to meaning and meaning generation. In this case, the basis is especially Vygotsky (1986)Vygotsky, Lev 1986 Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. and his ideas of meaning and meaning acquisition as centrally influenced by the context of the interpreter. The traditional idea of objective terminological meaning is substituted by the concept of unit of understanding. The substitution allows to represent meaning as dependent upon different disciplinary and linguistic contexts, i.e., the meaning of the same term may contain different knowledge elements depending on whether it is used, e.g., in a legal or an accounting context. Overlaps are possible, but the representation can model different understandings, and the conceptualization easily allows to orient knowledge resources towards the needs of different disciplinary understandings. Similarly, resources may be profiled towards differing levels of presupposed knowledge on the side of the user. Instead of working with frames as the basic model for representing knowledge and meaning, the approach works with the idea of prototype and of units of understanding composing larger networks of knowledge structured in a kind of language-oriented ontologies. Hence, ontologies as suggested in this approach play the role of basic structuring principle in the multilingual description of terms played by the frame in the other two approaches mentioned here, thus enabling comparisons across languages.

Frame approaches representing knowledge underlying legal communication

The second group of approaches concentrates upon representing knowledge underlying legal texts in order to understand the individual concepts or make relevant comparisons of such concepts, and less upon creating tools in the form of knowledge bases or terminological databases.

One line of research in this strand is interested in applying a frame semantics approach to model the actual knowledge structures underlying expert communication in the legal field. In this case, too, the basic assumption is that of frames as models of knowledge stored in long-term memory as suggested by Bartlett (1932)Bartlett, Frederic C. 1932 Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. London: Cambridge University Press.. However, the attention is upon the knowledge relevant for communicative understanding (U-relevant knowledge, cf. above) and upon frame semantics as a tool for legal conceptual work. Busse, Felden, and Wulf (2018)Busse, Dietrich, Michaela Felden, and Detmer Wulf 2018 Bedeutungs- und Begriffswissen im Recht. Berlin: de Gruyter. , as a very thorough example, present three different major studies in which they demonstrate the power of frame semantics as a method for assessing the shared disciplinary knowledge constituting legal concepts. One study focuses upon the special content and structure of a German statutory concept from criminal law in connection with its realization in legal practice (Diebstahl, i.e., the German version of the concept of theft). One study looks at finding the differences in knowledge between two related German legal concepts from private law (Eigentum and Besitz, two concepts from the field of property law). The last study uses frame semantics as a tool for demonstrating developments in the interpretation of a German criminal law concept (Gewalt, i.e., force). In Zarco-Tejada and Lazari (2017)Zarco-Tejada, Maria Ángeles, and Antonio Lazari 2017 “Los modelos de semántica de marcos para la representación del conocimiento jurídico en el Derecho Comparado: el caso de la responsabilidad del Estado.” Revista de Llengua i Dret 67:18. , a similar frame semantic approach is used for the purposes of comparative law, studying the national variants of the concept of state responsibility in a Spanish, French, English and Italian context. This line of research thus concentrates upon meeting the needs of legal experts for conceptual work when understanding national legal concepts or when securing comparability of concepts in comparative work. In both cases, the approach offers a broader conceptual description as in traditional legal work, which tends to concentrate upon functional aspects (cf. the functionalist approach to comparative law, Zweigert and Kötz 1996Zweigert, Konrad and Hein Kötz 1996 Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung. 3rd ed. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. , 35)

Finally, as the second line of research in this strand a version of frame semantics interested more in describing selected text-based elements in their relation to world knowledge presented by Konerding (1993)Konerding, Klaus-Peter 1993 Frames und lexikalisches Bedeutungswissen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. has been used for more discourse analytic studies of legal concepts. The original method was developed to construct meaning descriptions in dictionaries. The purpose of the method is to function as a descriptive instrument for qualitative textual content analysis inspired by frame semantics. However, unlike the first approach presented in this subsection, there is no ambition of assessing the full knowledge relevant for communicative understanding and the actual knowledge structures in their entirety (cf. Busse, Felden, and Wulf 2018Busse, Dietrich, Michaela Felden, and Detmer Wulf 2018 Bedeutungs- und Begriffswissen im Recht. Berlin: de Gruyter. , 35–36 for a critical view on this purpose in connection with the concept of frame). On this basis, the so-called Knowledge Collection and Categorization Method (Engberg 2009bEngberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. , 129) has been developed for studying aspects of legal concepts as represented in a text or in different texts in a corpus. Hence, there are overlaps in interest with Textual Terminology (cf. Condamines and Picton 2022Condamines, Anne and Aurélie Picton 2022 “Textual Terminology. Origins, principles and new challenges.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology: Explaining terms, concepts and specialized knowledge, edited by Marie-Claude L’Homme and Pamela Faber, 219–236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). However, where Textual Terminology aims at building large resources for purposes like Natural Language Processing, the Knowledge Collection and Categorization Method aims at analysing texts for discourse analytical purposes. The method has for instance been used for assessing differences in the way different authors emphasize elements of a concept in their writing, thus giving access to diverging positions to the content of a concept that may help us understand conceptual development (Engberg 2009bEngberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. ). Furthermore, the method has been used as a tool for systematic conceptual comparisons relevant for decision-making in legal translation (Engberg 2018Engberg, Jan 2018 “Comparative Law and Legal Translation as Partners in Knowledge Communication: Frames as a Descriptive Instrument.” In Institutional Translation for International Governance: Enhancing Quality in Multilingual Legal Communication, edited by Fernando Prieto Ramos, 37–48. London: Bloomsbury., 2020Engberg, Jan 2020 “Comparative law for legal translation: Through multiple perspectives to multidimensional knowledge.” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 33(2):263–282. ). These last-mentioned types of analyses will be presented in more detail below.

Dynamic nature of legal knowledge due to distributed character

Semantic change over time is a characteristic of all language use, dependent especially on the fact that language as such (and hence also lexical meaning) is distributed among the language users and does not refer to any ‘objective’ instance outside the context of the language users apart from accepted convention. However, due to the ideal of at least Western thinking that a legal system should be characterized by the rule of law, traditionally phrased as a government of laws, not of men, legal thinking has tended to ‘forget’ or tone down this aspect, because it works against the ideal. Instead, the ideal of literal interpretation of legal texts has been championed, although it is very difficult to theoretically explain what the literal meaning of words in a text actually is.

Expert communication, to which legal communication involving lawyers belongs, is even more prone to dynamics than everyday communication (see e.g. Temmerman and Van Campenhoudt 2014Temmerman, Rita and Marc Van Campenhoudt 2014 Dynamics and Terminology. An interdisciplinary perspective on monolingual and multilingual culture-bound communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. for studies of this aspect for different disciplines). Kerremans, Temmerman, and De Baer (2008Kerremans, Koen, Rita Temmerman, and Peter De Baer 2008 “Construing domain knowledge via terminological understanding.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 7:177–191. , 180–181) have isolated the following factors as drivers of constant development of the shared disciplinary knowledge underlying meaning in context:

• Urge for more and better understanding of the world as part of any discipline;

• Meaning as created in processes involving different language users with potentially different knowledge bases;

• General prototype structure of the knowledge underlying meaning-making in concrete situations.

Two factors are of special importance in this context: the distributed character of meaning making, on the one hand, and the prototype structure of human knowledge, which means that mental categories normally do not have sharp edges concerning instances belonging to the categories, on the other hand: individuals must not be aware of the fact that they do not fully agree on categorization, as long as they agree upon a sufficient part of the core of the category. This allows for differences arising ungoverned and in a ‘hidden’ fashion (see e.g. Heylen and Steurs 2014Heylen, Kris and Frieda Steurs 2014 “Translating legal and administrative language: How to deal with legal terms and their flexible meaning potential.” Turjuman 23(2):96–146.).

By looking at knowledge through a frame semantic lens, and especially by focusing on the distributed character of knowledge in frame semantic analyses, it is possible to understand the actual dynamics in a consistent theoretical context. Furthermore, law is a culturally constituted sign-system, which is “arbitrary as it depends on space and time” (Wagner, Matulewska, and Cheng 2020Wagner, Anne, Aleksandra Matulewska, and Le Cheng 2020 “Law as a culturally constituted sign-system – A space for interpretation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 5(2):239–267. , 240). Hence, the knowledge system of individuals is in a constant process of development due to influence from developments outside and inside the society (Wagner, Matulewska, and Cheng 2020Wagner, Anne, Aleksandra Matulewska, and Le Cheng 2020 “Law as a culturally constituted sign-system – A space for interpretation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 5(2):239–267. , 242–244). In traditional approaches to terminology, this aspect has mainly been studied under the heading of ‘variation’. An example is the analysis by Peruzzo (2017)Peruzzo, Katia 2017 “Legal system: an additional variable in the analysis of short-term diachronic evolution of legal terminology.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 2(2):291–313. on the influence of national legal systems on the development of terms on the victims of crimes. Attention in this analysis (although not in general in Peruzzo’s work, see e.g. Peruzzo 2014Peruzzo, Katia 2014 “Term extraction and management based on event templates: An empirical study on an EU corpus.” Terminology 20(2):151–170.) is on assessing the variation of terms about basically the same concepts and on categorizing the observed phenomena. In other words, formulations and regularities for their variation are at the centre of attention. Frame approaches, on the other hand, concentrate more upon developments in the content with a special interest in what parts of a concept (= which slots) are subject to developments, and how these changes may be explained as developments in the content of the frame. As indicated above, one of the studies presented in Busse, Felden, and Wulf (2018)Busse, Dietrich, Michaela Felden, and Detmer Wulf 2018 Bedeutungs- und Begriffswissen im Recht. Berlin: de Gruyter. is an example of such a frame-based investigation of conceptual development, looking at how the statutory concept of Gewalt has changed in interpretations by courts in the German legal system due to changes in conceptual positions over time. Kerremans, Andries, and Temmerman (2016)Kerremans, Koen, Vanessa Andries, and Rita Temmerman 2016 “Studying the Dynamics of Understanding and Legal Neologisms within a Linguistically Diverse Judicial Space: The Case of Motherhood in Belgium.” Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 231:46–52. investigate the use of denominations for types of mothers in statutory proposals in Dutch and French in the Belgian Parliament, with a focus on neologisms, i.e., words used for concepts that have not yet been included in statutory law. By comparing proposals in Dutch and French, it is possible to assess differences in what aspects and distinctions are highlighted in proposals in the various languages. On this basis, the authors find differences that signal differences in the knowledge used in understanding concepts of the field in the various language communities, differences that are prone to generate dynamics in terminological meaning.

Another driver of unintentional semantic dynamics in legal meaning is the inherent vagueness of legal concepts (Engberg and Heller 2008Engberg, Jan and Dorothee Heller 2008 “Vagueness and Indeterminacy in Law.” In Legal Discourse across Cultures and Systems, edited by Vijay K. Bhatia, Candlin, Christopher N. and Jan Engberg, 145–168. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ; Wagner, Matulewska, and Cheng 2020Wagner, Anne, Aleksandra Matulewska, and Le Cheng 2020 “Law as a culturally constituted sign-system – A space for interpretation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 5(2):239–267. , 251; 257–260). Again, the distributed nature of meaning, which a frame semantic approach is apt to grasp theoretically, is a central characteristic. A vague concept is one where borderline cases exist in which it is not possible to decide whether communicative instances belong to the category indicated by a concept or not. An example is the concept of reasonable doubt from private law. What is found here is less dynamics at system level and rather differences in the interpretation by readers in accordance with their conceptualization of the context in which the concept is used. This type of dynamics is especially visible in translations. Heylen and Steurs (2014)Heylen, Kris and Frieda Steurs 2014 “Translating legal and administrative language: How to deal with legal terms and their flexible meaning potential.” Turjuman 23(2):96–146. have developed a methodology consisting of an automated term extraction process for source text analysis combined with a corpus linguistic approach to the distribution of lexical units in a target text functioning as equivalents of the terms isolated in the source text. By assessing the range of different renderings in the target language of the same source language term it is possible to find the level of generality and vagueness of the investigated terms. From the point of view of traditional prescriptive terminology, these characteristics are systematic flaws. However, a frame approach with its acceptance of dynamics from the process of meaning making based on meaning potentials rather than as the process of decoding a fully delineated conceptual meaning allows us to work with a way of understanding the role of terms and the disciplinary concepts, they are connected with in accordance with the actual rather than idealistic characteristics of expert legal communication.

Non-monolithic character of legal knowledge, subject to contemporary challenge

Supplementary to the characteristic that (even) legal meaning is dynamic over time due to the fact that knowledge behind processes of meaning making is distributed among individuals, as discussed above, conceptual dynamics over time is also caused by the fact that concepts as building blocks of expert legal knowledge are typically openly non-monolithic at any one time. This characteristic is related to the distributed character of knowledge described above. However, where the development due to distribution is more of a coincidence, as language users are normally not aware of the differences between their knowledge bases and thus drive the development unconsciously, the non-monolithic characteristic hints at open and explicit differences that are even discussed in expert communication. Hence, where the dynamics due to distribution is a consequence of accepting terminology as human language (Cabré 1999Cabré, M. Teresa 1999 Terminology: theory, methods and applications [Reprint, Original title: <<La>> terminolgia. La teoria, els mètodes, les aplicacions 1992] Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), the non-monolithic characteristic relies upon the fact that legal experts constantly argue over the correct meaning of legal concepts, i.e., the first of the three drivers of Kerremans, Temmerman, and De Baer (2008)Kerremans, Koen, Rita Temmerman, and Peter De Baer 2008 “Construing domain knowledge via terminological understanding.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 7:177–191. mentioned in the previous section. Thus, open synchronous differences in meaning between different legal experts is frequent. Again, this is different from the conceptualization of traditional terminology oriented towards standardization, in which the basic assumption is that the discipline agrees upon definitions of its concepts and that the task of terminological work is then to clarify the concepts via defining explicitly and assigning one and only one designation, a term, to this definition. In other words, traditional standardization-oriented terminology is interested in the agreed knowledge of the discipline, as in Simonnæs (2013)Simonnæs, Ingrid 2013 “Legal translation and “traditional” comparative law – Similarities and differences.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 12:147–160. , for instance, who assesses the translations offered by students for the culture-bound Norwegian concept of med-moder (co-mother). However, as already mentioned above, disciplinary knowledge is characterized pragmatically by a constant push towards achieving new knowledge and hence develop concepts. In law this is especially the case because the rationale behind legal concepts is to solve problems in society stemming from differing interests among groups of citizens (Engberg 2016Engberg, Jan 2016 “Conceptualising Corporate Criminal Liability: Legal Linguistics and the Combination of Descriptive Lenses.” In Constructing Legal Discourses and Social Practices: Issues and Perspectives, edited by Girolamo Tessuto, Vijay K. Bhatia, Giuliana Garzone, Rita Salvi and Christopher Williams, 28–56. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.). For instance, rules on speeding balance the interests of car drivers to go as quickly as possible against the interests of other car drivers, bike riders and pedestrians of being safe in traffic, to mention a simple example. Already this aspect of compromise between interests carries in it the germ for the open co-existence of different conceptualizations, as it is highly likely that the holders of the different interests will consciously try to push the compromise over time, for instance intending to move the speed limits up or down. Furthermore, the fact that the meaning of legal concepts depends upon culturally constituted interpretation schemas that change with societal trends (Wagner, Matulewska, and Cheng 2020Wagner, Anne, Aleksandra Matulewska, and Le Cheng 2020 “Law as a culturally constituted sign-system – A space for interpretation.” International Journal of Legal Discourse 5(2):239–267. , 240) means that one of the expert activities of lawyers is to venture novel ways of interpreting basic legal concepts in the light of developments in the norms and values of a society. On these grounds, it is more likely in the field of law than in many other disciplines that competing versions of a concept will exist at the same time, which may share more or less the slot structure, but differ in the accepted fillers (cf. examples below). This is what I mean by stating that legal concepts are non-monolithic.

This state of affairs is difficult to grasp in traditional terminological approaches because they tend to focus on the common rather than on the individual. Frame-based approaches, on the other hand, have an advantage here, because they have a space for modelling the knowledge of humans rather than a decontextualized form of meaning. Hence, it is no theoretical problem in a frame approach to accommodate the (differing) knowledge of individuals (as the knowledge to be included in the model is seen as always distributed among individuals). Furthermore, it is unproblematic to accommodate the fact that it is even part of expert knowledge to know that differing and competing conceptualizations exist and to know how I as an individual position myself towards the different variants. For humans are able to know also what is in our view not correct but held by others to be true.

As examples, these characteristics have been investigated and modelled empirically in frame-based approaches in my own work. Engberg (2010)Engberg, Jan 2010 “Knowledge construction and legal discourse: The interdependence of perspective and visibility of characteristics.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(1):48–63. studies the simultaneous existence of different approaches to the conceptualization of murder in Swiss criminal law22.Schweizer Strafgesetzbuch Article 112. at different points in the development of the concept between two statutory definitions (1942 vs. 1990) as a factor in driving the diachronic dynamics. At any of the investigated points in time, different players in the development process prefer one of two opposing concepts (murderers to be convicted due to reproachable personal characteristics vs. murderers to be convicted due to their reproachable actions). This is a case of the same slot (the criterion for being classified as having committed a ‘murder’) being filled differently by different participants in the communication. What changes over time is the value given to the different variants by the (shifting) majority: both positions are present all the time, but what is the filler not accepted by the majority at the beginning of the development turns to being the preferred filler in the end without fully eliminating the previously preferred variant.

The influence of balancing of interests on the concept is also the object of study in Engberg (2009b)Engberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. . The studied concept is ‘corporate criminal liability’ from the context of US law, which is mentioned also above. The concept balances the interest of corporations to freely perform their activities in a non-personalized way, on the one hand, and the interest of society in being able to punish wrongdoings as acts of the (non-personalized) corporation, despite the system characteristic that only natural persons and not corporations may be subject of criminal punishment. Based on a study of a corpus of journal articles, aspects of the frame of the concept are established and it is assessed in the framework of matrix frames as descriptive framework to what degree the investigated journal articles agree upon the filling of different slots. Thus, the non-monolithic character of the shared knowledge is demonstrated through an investigation of expert communication.

As indicated above, a frame approach can also easily accommodate the fact that even the concepts held by individuals are non-monolithic. In Engberg (2009a)Engberg, Jan 2009a “Individual Conceptual Structure and Legal Experts’ Efficient Communication.” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 22(2):223–243. this is demonstrated empirically by showing that individual articles represent the differing fillers shown in Engberg (2009b)Engberg, Jan 2009b “Methodological aspects of the dynamic character of legal terms.” Fachsprache 31(3–4):126–138. , discuss them and position themselves towards them. The descriptive advantage of the frame approach in this context is that it is not limited by logical rules, but only by the affordances of the human cognitive system.