As part of the significant growth experienced by applied linguistics, experimental pragmatics has recently begun to be applied in the sphere of legal language. Interpretation is an essential and omnipresent activity in law and can be understood as a process of language comprehension. Legal norms – so-called maxims, canons or rules of interpretation – typically prescribe (among other things) that a legal norm or legal notion is to be interpreted in accordance with its 'ordinary meaning'. This allows to rely on experimental methods to test various predictions about such 'ordinary meaning'.
In a finalised project, Pirker and Skoczeń looked at whether the legislature (in the case of international law corresponding to the parties to a treaty) can convey more than it said or wrote and what this means for a(n international) judge or arbitrator interpreting the treaty and adding content to a legal rule. Additionally, they examined whether there is an influence of moral factors on interpretation in morally valenced cases. Experiments based on real cases from the international legal-interpretive practice and on pragmatic categorizations provide primary evidence that moral considerations directly impact the notion of ordinary meaning.
In an ongoing project, Smolka deals with the relevance-theoretic and (selected) neo-Gricean accounts of pragmatic enrichment and examines which of these prominent pragmatic theories may be best suited to account for pragmatic enrichment in international law and experimentally test the developed claims. The linguistic item chosen to test these claims in order to develop a future experimental setting is the word 'or' and its interpretation in selected international legal contexts. In the real world, the interpretation of 'or' determines whether e.g. the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction in ongoing proceedings between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
In an ongoing project, Pirker and Skoczeń use experiments to explore the existence and relevance of cognitive biases caused by the wording of a recently proposed new definition for the international crime of 'ecocide'.
References:
Pirker B and Skoczen I, 'Pragmatic Inferences and Moral Factors in Treaty Interpretation - Applying Experimental Linguistics to International Law' (2022) 23 German Law Journal 314
Pirker B and Smolka J, 'Five Shades of Grey - A Linguistic and Pragmatic Approach to Treaty Interpretation' (2022) 82 Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 121
Smolka J, 'Argumentation in the Interpretation of Statutory Law and International Law: Not Ejusdem Generis' (2022) 7 Languages 132
Smolka J and Pirker B, 'Pragmatics and the Interpretation of International Law-Two Relevance Theory-Based Approaches' in Giltrow J and Olsen F (eds), Legal Meanings: The Making and Use of Meanings in Legal Reasoning (Mouton de Gruyter 2021)
