La terminologie juridique

Lerat, Pierre

There are many ways to approach and analyze juridical terminology. Every approach is useful, even though for a great number of linguists juridical vocabulary is not really considered as a terminology. The first part of this paper is devoted to the presentation of the state of art in the field under scrutiny, including traditional approaches (savant language, technical language, pure language, ‘general’ theory of terminology) and more recent approaches (socioterminology, text mining terminology, communicative theory of terminology, frame terminology, sociocognitive approach, pragmaterminological approach). The second part explains how the philosophy of language can shed some light on juridical terminology. For this branch of human sciences, legal words and groups of words are lexical units used in legal discourses. Thus, relevant analysis perspectives include enunciation, reference, extension, predication and speech acts.