On the Notion of Interpretation

The carrying thesis of this contribution tells us that lawyers, scholars included, are prisoners of language. The statutes are manifested in language, as are the legal decisions, and DSL only works with different kinds of linguistic materials.

Jerzy Wroblewski specified interpretation with the help of three concepts. Interpretation in the widest sense of the term (sensu largissimo) is the understand­ing of any possible event, situation or process. The second type is interpretation in the wide sense (sensu largo). Its objective is human behaviour in a historical, cul­tural or social context. When thus defined, interpretation is the understanding of social actions and series of actions as social. The third alternative is interpretation in the narrow sense (sensu stricto), where the objects are the texts born as a result of human acts (Wroblewski 1991, 260).