Commissive Modality of International Legal Discourse: An Implicit Mitigation of the Bindingness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1206.03Keywords:
deontic modality, illocutionary force, international legal discourseAbstract
This research focuses on the problem of the correlation between discursive modality and illocutionary force - with substantiating variations in illocutionary force as a pragmatic basis for the scale-paradigm of deontic modality, influencing the binding force of international instruments. Guided by the criterion of explicitness and implicitness of illocutionary force markers, as well as their localization in performative or propositional part, the paper categorizes five classes of commissives in relation to speech acts: direct commissives, hedged direct commissives, indirect commissives, indirect implied commissives, hedged indirect implied commissives. Direct commissives when hedged preserve the performative verbs of self-commitment in their illocutionary part, while contain hedge structures and means of generalization in propositional part, scaling down the strength of commissive illocutionary force and associating deontic modality of commitments. Indirect commissives are illocutionary bicomponent acts, combining either expressive-commissive or assertive-commissive illocutionary forces. Indirect implied commissives and hedged indirect implied commissives rank at the penultimate and last levels of the scale of commissive deontic modality. They are devoid of a phrase subject designating the subject of the implementation of obligations. Predicates with the meanings of ‘necessity’ and ‘requirement’ indirectly mark obligations assumed whereas passive structures, nominalization, hedges, generalization, and other markers of decreased illocutionary force and associated deontic modality de-intensify such in international legal discourse.
References
Anti-Doping Convention Strasbourg, 16.XI.1989. Retrieved August 10 from CETS 135 - Anti-Doping Convention (coe.int)
Austin, John L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beijing Declaration 1995. (1995, September). Fourth World Conference on Women Beijing Declaration. Retrieved Sept 12 from https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/declar.htm
Benveniste, E. (1971). Analytical Philosophy and Language. In M. E. Meek (trans), Coral Gables (FL), Problems in General Linguistics. University of Miami Press. [Original work published 1963].
Blum-Kulka, S. (1985). Modifiers as indicating devices: The case of requests. Theoretical Linguistics, 12, 213–229.
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, J. and Fleischmanm, S. (1995). Modality in grammar and discourse. In: Bybee, J. and Fleischman, S. (eds). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Caffi, Claudia. (1999). On mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 881–909.
Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved Sept 18 from Cambridge Dictionary English Dictionary, Translations & Thesaurus
Cone, N. (2020). Speech Acts in UN Treaties: A Pragmatic Perspective. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 10(6), 813–827.
Convention on the Rights of the Child. General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989. Retrieved Sept 12 from OHCHR Convention on the Rights of the Child
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), 2006. Retrieved Aug 10 from OHCHR Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (1995, November 16). Retrieved Aug 17 from http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php
Diamond, Julie. (1996). Status and power in verbal interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins
Fairclough N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge.
Fowler, R. (1985). ‘Power’. In T.A. Van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Vol. 4, pp. 61–82). Academic Press.
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Council of Europe. (1995, February 1. Retrieved Sept 20 from https://rm.coe.int/16800c10cf
Hacquard, V. (2011). Modality. In: Maienborn, (edited) Claudia; von Heusinger, K.; Portner, P., Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Halliday, M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. (2002). Modes of Meaning and Modes of Expression: Types of grammatical structure and their determination by different semantic functions. In J. Webster (ed.) On grammar (pp. 196–218). London: Continuum.
Hegarty, M. (2016). Modality and propositional attitudes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heinrichsmeier, R. (2020). Ageing Identities and Women's Everyday Talk in a Hair Salon. New York: Routledg.
Holmes, Janet (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8, 345–365.
Kravchenko, N., Pasternak, T., & Davydova, T. (2020). Institutional eco-pragmatics vs. anthropo-pragmatics: problems, challenges, research perspectives. Cogito. Multidisciplinary research journal, XII(2), 24–39.
Kravchenko, N. (2017). Illocution of direct speech acts via conventional implicature and semantic presupposition. Lege artis. Language yesterday, today, tomorrow. The Journal of University of SS Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, II(1), 128–168.
Kravchenko, N. (2006). Interactive, genre and conceptual modeling of international legal discourse. Kiev, Ukraine: Referat (in Russian).
Kravchenko, N., & Blidchenko-Naiko, V. (2020) Multifaceted Linguistic Pragmatics of Justification (Ukrainian Speech-Based Study). Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 10, 11-22.
Kravchenko, N., Zhykharieva, O. (2020). Sign-like Pragmatic Devices: pro et contra. Kalbų studijos/Studies about Languages, 36, 70–84.
Martin, J. R., & David, R. (2003). Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause. London: Continuum.
Nuyts, J. (2016). Analyses of modal meanings. In Jan Nuyts & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), Oxford handbook of modality and mood, (pp. 31-49). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Palmer, F. R. (2001). Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Palmer. F.R. (1986). Mood and Modality. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of English language. London: Longman.
Šandová, J.K. (2015). Intersubjective positioning in political and economic interviews. Discourse and Interaction, 8(1), 65–81.
Sbisa, M. (2001). Illocutionary force and degrees of strength in language use. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 1791–1814.
Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Special Declaration of the Community of Latin-American and Caribbean States on Transparency and Fight against Corruption. Belén, Costa Rica, January 29th, 2015. Retrieved Sept 2 from 11. DE TRANSPARENCY AND CORRUPTION EN.pdf (cancilleria.gob.bo)
Von Fintel, K. (2006). Modality and language. In: BORCHERT, Donald. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Detroit: MacMillan Reference.
WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (2003) – FCTC. Retrieved Sept 10 from http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42811/9241591013.pdf?sequence=1 –
