What one means when speaking of an ‘understanding’ of words and language as developed by Law, is the ability to appreciate how a richer understanding of words affords. Firstly, a clarity of thought i.e. to say that the activity of thinking identifies for itself a locale of relevance and checks itself from straying i.e. to find thinking take place in terms with what is to be thought. Secondly, the articulation of thought and experience, by which we speak of the least possible dissonance between what is thought and what is said; the understanding that words must fill the desire for expression that thought carves. Thirdly, to be able to appreciate how the learning of a new word quickens thoughts within us previously unthought of. That language is not solely a communicative means but also impels thought, produces emotions.
To understand how every word is the unceasing result of a confluence of forces tied to the culture of an age, the prevalent attitude of an era, develops as a movement in the history of art develops, nestled and fomented, retarded and poisoned, by economic, social, religious, political and all in all such other historical factors. That the birth, growth and death of words draw their growth and gout and grave from the birth and growth and death of Man himself.
The idea and function of Law in democracy is much akin to what Kant calls the ‘public use of reason’ by which is meant primarily the Law’s ability to essentially nurture ‘emotions’, ‘an attachment – state’ towards the contents of Law. No other Science – human or natural, perhaps is as potent as Law in being able to instil a sense of ‘being privy to’ within its citizens/subjects and thereafter guide its development. One such elementary contents of the Law is the manner in which it employs language, the almost universal understanding that it carries of language and its understanding of the human mind vis-à-vis the subject.
Law confers an organic understanding and relation with language and words. It calls us to live in them. In this manner literature, poetry and good laws bear filial resemblances to each other. What one sighs, the other sings; what one writhes, the other writes; what one deeply plants within the heart, the other states to be already present in nature; what one knows to be divination, the other declares inviolable dictum. And one may say with ease that Shakespeare’s works are a great charter of laws and that the Hansard is a fine work on the human behaviour.
What jurist has better explained the law on defamation than Shakespeare when in Othello he writes, “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; ‘twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”
