Interpretation of conjunction and disjunction in legal discourse: What can pragmatic theories contribute?
Interpretation of conjunction and disjunction in legal discourse: What can pragmatic theories contribute?

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates the interpretation of the conjunction and and the disjunction or in legal texts, with a focus on international law and on ways in which pragmatic theories can assist such legal interpretation. The aim of the research is to explore if three different linguistic, or more precisely, pragmatic frameworks are applicable to interpretation in international law: Laurence Horn’s neo-Gricean framework and post-Gricean Relevance Theory, according to which and and or have conceptual meaning, and Mira Ariel’s as well as Ariel and Caterina Mauri’s framework, according to which these connectives have procedural meaning. Through a comparative analysis of these models, the paper demonstrates how each theory accounts for the potential pragmatic enrichment of the connectives, and that constraints on legal interpretation – the rules of interpretation – can be integrated into the three theories as instantiations of Gricean maxims. An analysis of two legal examples shows that all three theories make adequate predictions.

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