Disjunction in Legal Discourse
My research gravitates around modeling legal discourse. I constrain my work to disjunction and related effects, and I analyse World Trade Organisation dispute reports. I use the framework of Inquisitive Semantics, developed by Jeroen Groenendijk, Floris Roelofsen, Salvador Mascharenas and Ivano Ciardelli.
Legal discourse provides us a new and fascinating vantage point for reflection about language but, even though my research is linguistically oriented, I also include research about argumentation theory and the philosophy of language.
The overall program is very much inspired by Paul Grice:
Disjunction is an “element in a procedure which:
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i)Seeks total or partial progress in the solution of “W”-questions.
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ii)Deploys a method which is of its nature eliminative...”
Paul Grice “Studies in the Way of Words” 1989, p. 74
Presentations
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‣Thesis_Martin_Aher.pdf - Amsterdam, October 2009
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‣esslli2010stus_martin_aher.pdf Inquisitive Semantics and Legal Language- Copenhagen, August 2010. (To be published in ESSLLI student session proceedings in 2011.
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‣KogWis10_poster_Martin_Aher.pdf - Potsdam, October 2010.
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‣Free Choice in Deontic Inquisitive Semantics - presentation at the Amsterdam Colloquium 2011
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‣Free Choice in Deontic Radical Inquisitive Semantics - presentation at the Carnegie Mellon Philosophy Department Colloquium 2012
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Ongoing work