The legal discourse: methodological contributions for a semiotic analysis of law

The impact of the linguistics and the semiotics studies that shaked up the paradigm of social sciences during the 60' -linguistic turn-, have repercuted over law studies considered as discoursive and social system. This paper tries, on the one hand, to explain the mainstream theories in the semiotic field -Saussure and Peirce- when they are applied to the law studies, showing the functions of cultural, educative and ideological formations in legal knowledge. On the other hand, it presents a case analysis, in which one of the mainstream models is applied to achieve the comprehension of a law practice through a methodology based on semiotics.