Jan M. Broekman – författare

Analyzing the major components of law and legal procedure across both common and civil law, this book reveals how legal conversation on the `street'' contributes to our understanding of law as well as our democratic citizenship. Jan M. Broekman and Frank Fleerackers consider the impact of multiculturalism and the threat of terror on our impressions of legal conversation and the importance we place upon it, arguing that anarchism and legalism are hostile neighbors sharing many themes and motives. Exploring the meaning and sense of the concept of `street'' in ancient and modern times, the authors pose the question: is law just a discourse or should it be classified as one of the major narratives in human life?

Unique and discerning, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the language of law. Legal educators will find their scope broadened whilst researchers, activists and politicians will find themselves captivated by the focus on social activism and citizen motivation.

Focusing on the multilevel phenomenon of ''speech'', Jan M. Broekman explores the history of this theme, from the West-European Middle Ages, through to today s globalization. Existing philosophical concepts are studied for their views on ''alter'', other and otherness in speech, alongside scientific approaches including ''semiotics'', ''structuralism'' and, in particular, ''legal consciousness''. This state-of-the-art book unveils today s problems with the two faces of language: the analog and the digital, on the basis of which our smart phones and Artificial Intelligence create modern life.

Innovative and explorative, Rethinking Law and Language will be of value to law scholars, social scientists and psychologists alike. The investigation of professional language and the impact of digital communication on social relations will also appeal to judges and other officials as well as politicians

All knowledge is always a matter of change, as this book underlines. All knowledge links You and Me to Reality. This process of positioning cognition has become heavily influenced by conversion. Its cultural background is in this book named ‘the New Plural’: a worldview based on combinations of Analog, Digital, AI and Quantum understandings of reality.

The New Plural, combined with in-depth observations on the Subject in new forms of knowledge formation, forms the background theme of the book. To understand the Subject as defined in past centuries, like Kant’s so-called ‘split ego’ or Voegelin’s ‘flow’, are outlined together with Husserl’s ‘phenomenology of ego-positions’. Today, one encounters the Subject transformed into a Self with other forms that replace the traditional Subject and its position. The dynamics of the Self are therefore broader than any Selfie can picture. What the book calls ‘the Self in digital culture’ and for what it introduces the name Self-E, is therefore essential for a semiotic observation of all actual patterns and practices of communication.

The decentering of the Subject changed human cognition. The book introduces ‘The 3-S Triad’ (composed of the ‘Subject–Self–Self-E’), which has taken the place and functions of the classical Subject and its dynamics. Cognition has assumed a different position in the heart and mind of every human being. At the same time, the influence of ‘The New Plural’ has grown, making digital thought formation the leading pattern and foundation of today’s knowledge.

That different view on human identity made knowledge as understanding and its traditional grasping disappear. All fragments of planetary life were subjected to a newly conceived and often digitally anchored fitting. That forms one of the most powerful and global challenges to the human mind. What if we conclude about climate change that our knowledge fits the problems concerned? The book’s final pages outline an epistemological path through such complex zones of knowledge! But its broad and encompassing background question remains, what the concept of change really means when it is challenged to clarify the topic we name climate change.

This book examines the concept of meaning and ourgeneral understanding of reality in a legal and philosophical context. Startingfrom the premise that meaning is a matter of linguistic and other forms ofarticulation, it considers the inherent philosophical consequences.  PartI presents Klages’, Derrida’s, Von Hofmannsthal’s and Wittgenstein’sexplorations of silence as a source of articulation and meaning.  Debatesabout 20th century psychologism gave theattitude concept a pivotal role; it illustrates the importance of the discoverythat a word is globally qualified as ‘the basic unit of language’.  Thisis mirrored in the fact that we understand reality as a matter of particles andthus interpret the real as a component of an all-embracing ‘particle story’. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of legal semiotics relatedto the chapter’s theme: for instance on the meaning of a Judge’s ‘Saying forLaw’, on law students training in varying attitudes or on the ties between lawand language. 

This engaging book examines the origins and first effects of the concept ‘legal semiotics’, focusing on the inventor of the term, Roberta Kevelson (1931-1998). It highlights the importance of her ideas and works which have contributed to legal theory, legal interpretation and philosophy of language. 

Kevelson’s work is particularly relevant today, in our world of global electronic communication networks which rely so much on language, signs, signals and shortcuts. Kevelson could not have foreseen the 21st century, yet the story of her work and influence deserves more attention as it is key to our understanding of modern legal discourse and why law fascinates and is accepted in modern society. The authors draw on Kevelson’s hitherto unknown Office Papers and Notes, and a biographical examination points to key influences in her work such as the early feminist movements of the US East Coast, the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semiotics of Thomas Sebeok. This formsthe basis for a more encompassing research of Kevelson’s position, work and philosophical background, which the authors call for. A quick and enlightening read, this book interests a wide range of readers with an interest in legal history and the fields which Kevelson both drew on and influenced, including lawyers, students and scholars.

This book examines the progress to date in the many facets – conceptual, epistemological and methodological - of the field of legal semiotics. It reflects the fulfilment of the promise of legal semiotics when used to explore the law, its processes and interpretation.

This study in Legal Semiotics brings together the theory, structure and practise of legal semiotics in an accessible style. The book introduces the concepts of legal semiotics and offers an insight in contemporary and future directions which the semiotics of law is going to take.

A theoretical and practical oriented synthesis of the historical, contemporary and most recent ideas pertaining to legal semiotics, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in law and social sciences , as well as those who are interested in the interdisciplinary dynamics of law and semiotics.