Legislative Drafting and Language: Legal Language in Context

A word, when used in a piece of text, usually denotes only one meaning out of the multiplemeanings it is inherently capable of bearing. The general observation is that it is thecontext that determines which meaning of the word should be considered. This observation,as a logical consequence, leads us to identify the context responsible for meaningvariation of a word. The general view is that the identification of context dependsheavily on intuitive abilities of a language user. One way to facilitate the achievement ofthe important goal of ensuring that legislation is interpreted as the drafter intended isclearly to make legislative drafters more aware of the linguistic aspects of their activity,so as to enable them to test more effectively the linguistic accuracy and the discoursalefficacy of the texts they are drafting.