cosmology of wider contexts, with no definable boundaries; any single aspect of
context merges seamlessly into innumerable others. Acts and records operate within
contexts that appear both particularised and infinite.
Archivists, of course, know that records are created in contexts. However, context
remains a negotiable term, open to differing interpretations in archival literature.
Some archivists equate context with the traditional understanding of the
'provenance' of records in terms of the individual, family, or organisation that
created or received them (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 317); some seek to extend notions
of both context and provenance beyond the immediate origins of records to
encompass their societal framing and their histories of custody and use (Bastian,
2003, pp. 81-83; Nesmith, 2002, pp. 35-36); others see provenance as a narrow
concept and affirm that context refers to a broader range of phenomena including
the social, cultural, functional, and legal environments of records (Horsman, 2011,
p.2; Schwartz, 2011, p. 73).
In conventional diplomatic scholarship, the pre-eminent and necessary context in
which records are created is identified as a 'juridical system'. The word 'juridical' is
characteristic of civil-law environments and is rarely used in Anglophone countries,
but its connotations are similar to those of the English word 'legal'. Writing from a
philosophical perspective, Chaim Perelman (1980, p. 168) identified the probable
'initial theses of a juridical system' as constitutional principles, laws, judiciary
precedents, and 'general principles of law'. Although archivists schooled in
diplomatic no longer perceive the juridical system as the sole context for record
creation and have delineated an extended range of contexts (Duranti, 2010, p.
1596),10 they have continued to affirm the pervasiveness of law (Duranti, 1998, p.
61) and the determinant influence of the juridical system on the authorship or
origination of records (Duranti, 1991/2, p. 4).11
One reason why diplomatic scholarship assigns a pivotal role to legal or juridical
systems is its abiding concern with the identification of approved forms of wording
as a means of testing authenticity. Diplomatists ask whether a document employs
the wording that the juridical system requires to effect a transaction or to create
legally acceptable evidence of a transaction. More precisely - since the standpoint of
traditional diplomatic is retrospective - they ask whether it employs a wording that
the juridical system might have recognised at the time the document purports to
have been created. In the sphere of diplomatic, written form is of concern only
insofar as laws (or binding systems of rules that resemble laws) have taken
cognizance of it, and documents whose language remains 'below the perception
threshold of the law' (Vismann, 2008, p. 11) are marginal or problematic. Law, it
seems, remains the context of primary interest.
In contrast, speech act philosophers make no attempt to identify a single, privileged
context, and they do not claim to be able to define every aspect of context. Since
context is limitless, any attempt at exhaustive classification seems predestined to
fail. But speech act theory offers insights into the kinds of immediate contexts in
which social acts are performed (and, if their performance involves the creation of
written records, the immediate contexts in which these records come into being).
It also seeks to analyse the means used to perform such acts and the contextual
conditions needed for successful performance.
Social acts need not be achieved by linguistic means; they can be performed by
gestures, such as raising one's arm to vote at a meeting or bid at an auction.
However, language supplies conventions that allow communications among
humans to be more precisely formulated and understood, and permits social acts of
greater complexity. Speech act theory investigates how spoken or written language is
used to perform such acts in particular contexts. When applied to writing, it can
serve to explicate written records created in informal as well as formal settings, love
letters as well as letters patent, and promises to mow the lawn as well as legal
contracts. Instead of seeing language from the perspective of the law, it helps to
situate legal and quasi-legal records within a wider consideration of language, its
uses and conventions, and its embedding in society.
In examining what can be done with language, speech act philosophers are usually
uninterested in regulations that seek to dictate the words used to perform specific
actions. Legal systems sometimes attempt to minimise the possibility of dispute by
prescribing exact wordings, but actions can also be achieved by documents whose
wording is discretionary. Business letters, for example, though sometimes
stigmatised by diplomatists because their written form is not juridically required,
can perform acts of making promises, agreements, instructions, or permissions.
Linguistic and social conventions allow these acts to be achieved; insofar as there are
constraints on the wording used, they are constraints of language, not of law.
Social conditions
Some kinds of act simply require speakers or writers to know - and comply with -
established linguistic practices. According to psycholinguist Charles Osgood (1979,
p. 207), all known human languages are capable of expressing assertions. In Searle's
words, 'to make a statement I need only obey the rules of language' (1979, p. 7).
Many directive acts, such as making a request, are also based purely on linguistic
conventions; anyone with the necessary language skills can make a request of
someone else, and anyone who has learnt to put language into writing can make a
request in written form. But some directive acts, such as orders and commands,
require more than linguistic ability; because they operate only in situations where
archives in liquid times
10 Duranti (1997, p. 217) identified four types of context; in later work (2005, p. 27), she added a fifth. In the
model proposed by Livia Iacovino (1998, p. 223), the juridical system remains predominant, and regulatory,
provenancial, and documentary contexts are all subordinate to, or part of, a juridical context or system.
To many archivists working outside the diplomatic tradition, these types of context are interdependent
rather than hierarchical or fully distinct, and can be seen as 'forms of networks with nodes or nexuses of
action, agents and relationships' (Gilliland, 2014, p. 19).
11 In attempting to accommodate records whose juridical character may be thought doubtful, Duranti and
others have sought to give the term 'juridical system' a wider meaning beyond its purely legal significance.
Duranti (1991/2, p. 4) redefined it as a 'social group'; for Iacovino (2005, p. 260), the concept of a juridical
system embraces professions, institutions, communities, and private social associations that issue rules or
standards. However, it appears that such social groups must have law-like or binding rules, or must follow
routine procedures or habits, if their records are to come within the purview of diplomatic (Duranti, 1998,
pp. 44, 61). In more recent work, Duranti has sometimes (e.g., 2010, p. 1596) replaced the term 'juridical
system' with 'juridical-administrative system', but the continuing emphasis on binding rules has ensured
the survival of a predominantly legalistic view of records (cf. Brothman, 2011, pp. 289, 310). In similar
fashion, Henttonen's (2007; 2017) studies of records and speech acts tended to assign a privileged position
to records associated with formal institutional settings and rules.
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