Making Interpretation More Explicit: International Law and Pragmatics
Nordic Journal of International Law, p. 228-266, 2017
27 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2017
Date Written: July 31, 2017
Abstract
In this interdisciplinary paper, a legal scholar and a linguist specialising in pragmatics aim to combine the scientific strands of linguistics and international law. We make a case for integrating modern linguistics and pragmatics into the study of legal interpretation and outline benefits such an approach could offer. In a previous article, we highlighted that international legal scholarship is increasingly focused on the interpretation of international law, which has engendered a rich set of interdisciplinary approaches. Intuitively, one might think that the field of law and language might be a good candidate for exploring the link between international law, interpretation and linguistics because law is language in the sense that it relies on language for its use. Despite the increasing recognition that “linguistics has a role to play in understanding legal interpretation[,] there is little evidence that legal scholars are developing the skills to make use of linguistic skills”, which stands in surprising contrast to their embracing the fundamentals of economics.
Given this surprising desideratum, in our previous article we presented a comprehensive programmatic overview of our joint approach to modelling legal interpretation. In this article, we focus more closely on our posited parallel between the scientific domains of pragmatics and interpretation of treaties in international law and how well they map onto – or apply to – each other.
Keywords: International Law, Legal Interpretation, Linguistics, Pragmatics, Law and Language, Cognitive Pragmatics, Cognitive Linguistics
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