PRAGMATISM OF MODAL VERBS: CASE STUDY OF ‘ICAO’ REQUIREMENTS
PRAGMATISM OF MODAL VERBS: CASE STUDY OF ‘ICAO’ REQUIREMENTS

Summary/Abstract: Airspace nowadays is being used by almost all states of the world. Therefore, airspace users have become increasingly more aware of the necessity that common air rules should be applied, in order to avoid any hazards. The language of these air laws had to be as simple and clear as to be perceived correctly by everyone. The historical context of the World War II determined that the first international meeting of the states that had national aviation structures should be in Chicago, and the language used for negotiations or the final text of the Convention was English. Not all of the world states could be represented at the Chicago meeting because some of them were still at war, but countries that were interested in being part of the Convention were represented by a third party. The domination of the allied forces at the end of the war, with regard to air supremacy, resulted in a series of international documents, all of which written in English, then translated into the six languages of the United Nations. The current paper aims to analyze the pragmatic uses of modal verbs as they appear in some of the Annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation and to determine whether or not their meanings may lead to instances of miscommunication or altered messages generated by interpretation in languages other than English.

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