Institutionally Embodied Law: Cognitive Linguistics and the Making of International Law

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingBook chapterResearch

This chapter examines language’s role in the formation of legal categories. It holds that they are not just subject to whims of negotiated power dynamics but also to the dynamics of how human beings involved in the legal process operationalize underlying cognitive processes. We focus on the process of law-making by cognitive category-making. We promote a methodological intervention to examine the processes of meaning-making in legal principles to explore the politics of legal practice in action as, in part, an embodied cognitive process. Although public hearings, consultation, and deliberation are all part of the legal process, we focus on how law is performed as a written exercise with the goal of understanding the law through its use of linguistic choices. The result is an exploration of how language displays the cognitive underpinnings of legal category making and the development of legal institutions, legal rules and, the law itself.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Law’s Invisible Frames : Social Cognition and Knowledge Production in International Legal Processes
EditorsAndrea Bianchi, Moshe Hirsch
Number of pages13
Publication date2021
Chapter4
ISBN (Print)9780192847539
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

ID: 231558529