Legal statements: discursive act, transaction and reading comprehension

This article analyzes legal interpretation from the perspective of contemporary linguistic sciences, proposing to overcome the traditional approach that reduces the reading of the norm to a mechanical decoding. The fundamental purpose is to demonstrate that the meaning of the legal text constitutes a dynamic event arising from the active interaction between the interpreter and the law. In this sense, the study proposes to investigate how the planes of linguistic comprehension operate in legal praxis and whether they correspond directly to the classical methods of interpretation of Law. To address this question, a methodology based on a reflective-critical bibliographic design was adopted, using content analysis as a primary technique on doctrinal and normative sources. As an analytical guideline, the transactional model, the reading levels and the theory of discursive genres were applied in an integrated way to Article 4 of the Venezuelan Civil Code. The qualitative results reveal an exact structural analogy between the fields of study: the reading of the lines is linked to the grammatical element; the analysis between the lines agrees with the logical factor; and the review behind the lines coincides with the historical and systematic components. The academic debate revolves around the need for judges and lawyers to abandon exegetical passivity, recognizing that the reader’s sociocultural background determines the meaning of the norm as much as its literal wording. It is concluded that the judicial sentence functions as a comprehensive and active response, validating legal practice as a process of complex human communication.