Language and Biography

This chapter addresses the role of language in legal history research. When trying to determine what a law means, researchers must understand what the terminology meant at the time the law was crafted. Researchers have three avenues to attack the problem. First, they can find dictionaries published at the time under consideration. Second, they can use a modern dictionary that provides guidance to a word's historical use. Finally, they can find the word in documents from the time of interest and try to work out the meaning from context. Since the law is a specialized field, terms may be used in a way that a general dictionary might not offer; therefore, specialized legal dictionaries should be consulted when possible. The chapter then looks at three types of biographical sources: book-length biographies, directory-type resources that provide brief biographical data, and encyclopedic biographical sets.