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5 JLL 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/jlangaw5 and id is 1 raw text is: International Journal of LANGUAGE & LAW Smolka &Pirker, )LL5 (2016): 1-40 w Ia dw de International Law and Pragmatics - An Account of Interpretation in International Law Jennifer Smolka and Benedikt Pirker* Abstract In this interdisciplinary paper, a legal scholar and a linguist aim to combine the scientific strands of linguistics and international law. Linguistics, and especially pragmatics, has not yet been fully integrated into the study of interpretation in international law, although some in- ternational legal scholars have started to apply the labels linguistic or pragmatic to their work on interpretation. While they do take into account research in the field of law and lan- guage, there is a tendency to follow very traditional approaches according to which seman- tics and pragmatics are divided into neatly separated domains. We posit a parallel between legal interpretation and pragmatics. Pragmatics has evolved from the so-called waste- basket of linguistics to become a fully-fledged discipline. The same should be true of legal interpretation and its study in international law, which should no longer be considered merely a legal afterthought- as if meaning were all in the text. We argue that scientifically grounded pragmatics should be applied to legal interpretation. Recent research in linguis- tics and pragmatics, and the concepts that such research has provided, may also help us to build a stronger scientific foundation for the debate within international law on interpreta- tion. Integrating pragmatics may allow for a more suitable model of legal interpretation than the sociological approaches some international lawyers have turned to. This may also provide a plausible link between the actors and structures of legal interpretation. Keywords International law, legal interpretation, law and language, linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, cognitive sciences, i nterdiscipl inarity Submitted: 19 October 2015, accepted: 28 March 2016, published online: 8 August 2016 * Smolka: Freelance Translator (M.A., University of Mainz, Certificate of Specialisation in Linguistics, Univer- sity of Geneva), e; Pirker: Senior Lecturer, University of Fribourg, . The authors would like to thank Ziv Bohrer, Markus Kern, Thomas Burri, Moshe Hirsch, An- toine Auchlin, Dieter Stein, Friedemann Vogel, Kali Tal, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Research for the article has been kindly supported by the )ean Nordmann Foundation. All errors remain within our responsibility. International Journal of Language & Law vol. 5 (2016) 1 DO I:

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