Intertextuality in Legal Language: Reflection and Study in an Italian Environmental Law

Abstract

Intertextuality is postulated as one of the substantial elements for the analysis and understanding of texts, since it is the essential element that gives meaning to the macro-structure and is found both implicitly and explicitly, in the same way that it requires the reader to have previous knowledge. He or she must interpret the function of decoding information through the different networks of transtextualitycreated with other texts, especially when this corresponds to the figure of a linguistic mediator. In this article, we introduce the concept of intertextuality in linguistics and reflect on the most recurrent contexts where these textual relationships take place. Subsequently, we detail the importance that it has in legal language as it is a language of specialisation that exhaustively covers all the possible casuistry in its task of being as precise as possible. In this respect, and finally, we propose to detail the practical cases of intertextuality detected in Italian Law 68/2015 of 22 May on the environment, with the aim of alerting the translator of legal texts to the importance of knowing how to weave intertextual networks in such language for their correct translation.