Errors in the application of language rules of legislative texts formation

Errors in the application of language rules of the legislative texts formation are the result of a complex logical and linguistic process. The rules of logic in texts of law form the basis of a legislative text, and are the framework, on which the legislative text is based on language rules. Compliance with language requirements ensures certainty and consistency, and the logic of the presentation of legal material, in turn, contributes to its accuracy and clarity. The logic of constructing a law is impossible without the logic of its language, and vice versa. The legal ways to eliminate errors in the application of language rules for the formation of legislative texts are: a) the distribution of the whole range of errors in the application of language rules for drafting legislative texts into general, terminological, syntactic and stylistic; b) effective use of legislative techniques as a system of tools and rules for creating laws and their systematization, which must be carried out in accordance with certain rules (legal structures, language tools, digital expressions, rules for setting out the norms of law in articles of law, rules for constructing law, rules of logic etc); c) normative consolidation of the requirements of the legislative style in the form of a hierarchy of division into general and special-legal. The general requirements include: 1) coherence and consistency of legislative texts, the absence of tautological errors; 2) accuracy and clarity, which means the quality of a legisltive text; 3) simplicity of presentation of a legislative text, which means the unambiguity of the text; 4) conciseness and compactness of a legislative text. Special legal requirements give normative quality to a legislative text. Among which it is possible to single out: 1) requirements in the field of nature of the prescription; 2) language standardization as an independent requirement for a legislative text; 3) the requirement of composition (graphicity) of a legislative text

The Worship of the Goddess of Language: Ram Mani Acharya Dixit’s Efforts in Standardization of the Nepali Language in Benares

This paper will focus on a 20th century Nepali intellectual, Ram Mani Acharya Dixit (1883–1972), and his trans-border activities for the promotion of the vernacular by investigating his integration of the progress of a language with his nation, his apotheosis of the vernacular and his devotion in strengthening prose writing for the sake of the development of the divine mother tongue. Foregrounding his linguistic activities such as writing, publishing and printing in Nepal and India, with Benares in particular, it will try to answer questions such as: What was the motivating factor that inspired him to write and publish in the Nepali language? Was he in any way influenced by the Hindi language movement that was at its peak in North India of the time? How influential was Dixit’s role in standardizing Nepali? Besides this Nepali language standardization concern, the paper will also examine Dixit’s idea of serving mother, motherland, mother tongue and [Hindu] religion through service to a language.

Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

This book breaks new ground in the study of language standards and standardization through its focus on Asia and in the attention paid to multilingual contexts. The chapters add to our understanding of the ways in which multilingualism is implicated in language standardization, as well as the impact of language standards on multilingualism.

A commentary on: Reappropriation of Gendered Irish Sign Language in One Family

Barbara LeMaster’s article “Reappropriation of Gendered Irish Sign Language in One Family” in Visual Anthropology Review piqued my interest with its initial sentence: The native vocabularies of one segment of the Dublin deaf community (i.e., primarily women over 70 and men over 55) contain different signs for the majority of common lexical items examined (LeMaster 1990). From this I learned that there existed different female and male signs in Irish Sign Language. This intrigued me and led me to explore further, despite recognizing that I was probably out of my comfort zone. I would be addressing a topic of social history, through my lens of theoretical and empirical aspects of communication design. Curiously, I rejected a more comfortable choice of an article that uses an approach far more familiar to me: research analyzing the covers of introductory texts on cultural anthropology (Hammond et al., 2009). I am therefore acutely aware that the questions I ask about Irish Sign Language not only stem from another discipline, but also introduce different research methods. I also suspect that some of the issues I raise are covered elsewhere, either by LeMaster or by other researchers. This I regard as a positive sign of considerable overlap between our disciplines. In the following commentary on LeMaster’s article, I start with a brief account of what I consider to be main themes within the article. This is not a comprehensive summary, but sets the scene for discussion points. I then propose some general differences in approach and emphasis between the disciplines of visual anthropology, as represented in this article, and communication design. Although I have situated myself within a particular sector of communication design (in the introduction), I have nonetheless tried to cover a wider field encompassing design practitioners and historians. From more general topics, I narrow down to specific areas that might inform, or be informed by, graphic communication research: the process of language standardization and dictionary design. The final section on signs moves us some distance from LeMaster’s study. However, personally, one of the most exciting aspects of research is forging links between apparently disparate areas of research, which might require a leap in the dark.