Семантична структура терміна «дитина» в законодавчих текстах і професійна компетентність студентів-правників: aсоціативно-семантичний аспект

Semantic Structure of the Term “Child” in Legislative Texts and Professional Competence of Law Students: Associative-Semantic Aspect This article presents the principles of reconstruction of the semantic struc­ture of the concepts of legal discourse and the methodology of evaluation of the results by involving a professionally oriented audience. The procedure was applied on the example of semantic structuring of the term “child” according to texts of international and Ukrainian legislation in the field of child protec­tion. The article concretises and deepens the idea of the conceptual meaning of the term “child”, which combines common language (non-professional) and professionally oriented idea about reality. The associative-semantic experi­ment held for the purposes of the study set three areas of work: (1) checking the level of students’ knowledge of provisions on the rights of the child; (2) checking the knowledge of key legal terms in this domain and the ability to use them in legal proceedings; (3) teaching students to differentiate correctly between legal and general vocabulary in a given field. It was also established that the semantic structure of the term “child” in legislative texts is determined by associative subcomponents – semantic microfields “child and life”, “child and protection”, “child and health”, “child and family”, “child and freedom”, “child and dignity”, “child and development”, “child and work”, “child and well-being”, “child and crime”, “child and war”, the verbalisers of which are syntactic nominations of the child and the corresponding stereotypical state­ments that mean a right of the child. Struktura semantyczna terminu „dziecko” w tekstach prawnych a kompetencje zawodowe studentów prawa: Aspekt asocjacyjno-semantyczny Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia zasady rekonstrukcji struktury semantycznej pojęć dyskursu prawniczego oraz metodologię oceny jej wyników przy udziale odbiorców ukierunkowanych zawodowo. Procedurę zastosowano na przykładzie struktury semantycznej terminu „dziecko” zgodnie z tekstami ustawodawstwa międzynarodowego i ukraińskiego w zakresie ochrony dziecka. Artykuł kon­kretyzuje i pogłębia koncepcję pojęciowego znaczenia terminu „dziecko”, który łączy w sobie potoczne i zorientowane zawodowo wyobrażenie o rzeczywistości. Przeprowadzony na potrzeby badania eksperyment asocjacyjno-semantyczny wyznaczył trzy kierunki pracy: (1) sprawdzenie poziomu znajomości przez studentów przepisów dotyczących praw dziecka; (2) sprawdzenie obeznania z kluczowymi terminami prawnymi w tym zakresie i umiejętności posługiwania się nimi w postępowaniu prawnym; (3) wdrożenie studentów do prawidłowej dyferencjacji słownictwa prawniczego i ogólnego w danym zakresie. Ustalono również, że strukturę semantyczną terminu „dziecko” w tekstach prawnych wyznaczają asocjacyjne subkomponenty – mikropola semantyczne „dziecko i życie”, „dziecko i ochrona”, „dziecko i zdrowie”, „dziecko i rodzina”, „dziecko i wolność, „dziecko i godność”, „dziecko i rozwój”, „dziecko i praca”, „dziecko i dobrostan”, „dziecko i przestępczość”, „dziecko i wojna”, których werbaliza­torami są nominacje syntaktyczne dziecka i odpowiadające im stereotypowe stwierdzenia, które oznaczają prawo dziecka.

Legal Media Discourse: Boundaries, Structure, Categories

The paper considers legal media discourse as a discursive format that arose as a result of the interaction of legal discourse and media discourse. The research is aimed at defining the boundaries, structure and categories of legal media discourse. The material of the research are texts of legal media discourse including analytical articles on legal issues, regulatory legal acts, news materials and other genres implemented within the boundaries of the discursive format under study. The research applies methods of scientific description (systematization and interpretation), discursive analysis, as well as the simulation method. The paper provides an overview of research in the field of legal discourse and media discourse, which helps to get closer to defining the boundaries of the format under study, which represents a promising direction for further research. As a result of the systematization of the theoretical and practical material, the boundaries and structure of legal media discourse are determined. It is established that the boundaries of legal media discourse, which is a hybrid discursive formation, lie within the intersection of legal discourse with media discourse. The resulting discursive space has a field structure (core, periphery) and represents a discourse format that concretizes two types of discourse (legal discourse and media discourse) and is represented in turn by different genres. The article gives the description of the categories of legal media discourse, which is based on the model proposed by V. I. Karasik. The paper reveals typical participants of communication, their possible presuppositions, sphere of functioning, chronotope, goals and strategies, genre organization. The author also discusses the issue of implementing the expressive function in legal media discourse through the use of colloquial and obscene lexemes.

The socio-economic category “quality of life” in the analytical and legal discourse: the issues of the interdisciplinary research

The article deals with the topical issues of searching and identifying legal indicators of the socio-economic category quality of life. The goals and objectives of social development, respect for and protection of socio-economic rights and freedoms of citizens, improvement of legislation in the study area are specified with the help of theoretical and applied methodological levels of legal analysts. The expediency of formulation and use of the legal criteria for the quality and standard of living is justified; it helps to identify the state as social and law-governed. The author focuses on the need to apply an interdisciplinary approach in the research of the category the quality of life, which is of mutual importance for legal, economic and, in general, socio-humanitarian science.

Legal and linguistic uncertainty of terms and norms of Russian laws

The article presents the results of a study of de jure (modeled) and de facto (real) interpretation of the concept legal and linguistic uncertainty, which is relevant for modern Russian legal discourse, lawmaking, judicial, and expert practice. These features are typical for Russian legal discourse, lawmaking, judicial, expert practice, as well as the scientific sphere of communication. The article is aimed at studying the objective and subjective reasons for legal and linguistic uncertainty of legislative terms and legislative norms; analysing the conditions under which uncertainty is considered as an attribute of law language and a means of legal regulation or a defective formulating legal rules, falsa leclio. Legal and linguistic uncertainty is considered from different points of view: (a) the dichotomy clarity/ uncertainty; (b) the legislative definition; (c) attitude to the system of Russian legislation terms; (d) variability, disambiguate, double-meaning; (e) the basis for procedural decisions (expert assessment, adjustment of the norm of the draft law or the current law, rejection of the draft law). The subjective factors of legal and linguistic uncertainty are analyzed, on the one hand, from the position of professional competencies of law developers and specialists examining laws in different aspects - linguistic, legal, anti-corruption, legal and technical, pedagogical, etc. On the other hand, they are analysed from the point of view of legal and other knowledge of the addressees, those, who interpret the law. The research methodology is traditional for modern Russian studies and legal linguistics: analysis, comparison, deduction, induction, analogy, modeling, as well as contextual, interpretive, systemic, discursive, interdisciplinary, practice-oriented and other approaches. Due to interdisciplinary nature of the research, works on linguistics, jurisprudence, legal linguistics, documents of legislative, judicial, expert practice, texts of Russian (federal) laws, materials from the Dictionary of Terms of Russian Legislation were used. The prospects for the study are outlined: considering legal and linguistic uncertainty in the aspect of creating laws in two or more state languages, orthology, etc.

LEGAL DISCOURSE AS AN OBJECT OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH (Overview)

В статье представлен обзор исследований, посвящённых юридическому дискурсу: обобщены дефиниции и характеристики юридического дискурса, перечислены подходы к его изучению и принципы структурирования The article presents some legal discourse research findings. The overview highlights definitions and characteristics of legal discourse, and lists applied linguistic approaches and structure principles.

DIALOGIC STRATEGIES OF LEGAL DISCOURSE TRANSLATION

В статье рассматриваются стратегии юридического перевода в дискурсивно-диалогической перспективе. К ним относятся форенизация и доместикация, направленные на десубъективизацию содержания дискурса; стратегии контроля и вербального уклонения, использующиеся для «сохранения лица»; а также адаптация темпоральных смыслов к принимающей культуре, реализующаяся посредством их точной, тождественной и гармоничной трансляции. The article consideres the strategies of legal translation in the discursive dialogic perspective. They include foreignizing and domesticating aimed at the desubjectivization of the discourse contents; control strategy and verbal communication avoidance strategy used to save face; as well as adaptation of temporal meanings to the target culture that is achieved through their accurate, adequate and harmonic communication.

The Othering of Older People in Disability Policies

Disability policies in Sweden rest on the idea that all humans have equal value and a goal of policies has been to enable persons with disabilities to be able to live like other members of society, but older people do not seem to be included as part of this goal. The presentation concerns the Swedish support system’s legal discourse, and investigates the rationale for excluding people over the age of 65 from services that younger people with disabilities may obtain. Data consists of government texts and court decisions under the Severe Disability Act about services for people over the age of 65. It was found that little in the legal discourse concerns the needs and rights of older people, and the general belief is that the Severe Disability Act is primarily intended for children, young people, and adults of working age. The legal discourse contained a type of “residual ageism” that was justified through the indirect construction of older people as different. Othering of older people was present in assumptions about differences in categorizations (people with disabilities vs older people with support needs), needs (active age vs not active age), and comparisons (with people without disabilities of the same age vs with others receiving eldercare). The presentation outlines potential changes of these policies.

Compassion and Self-Concern in Halakhic Environmental Decision-Making

The prevailing stance in Jewish orthodoxy is that environmental issues are extra-legal and not under the purview of halakhah (Jewish law). While considered important, environmental protection falls only under “midat haḥasidut” (extraordinary piety). This ultimately translates into environmental protection being treated as non-obligatory and only under the purview of righteous behavior rather than obligation. This has created a significant barrier to halakhically driven environmental decision-making. I argue that this worldview emerges from the process of conceptualizing the prohibition of bal tashḥit—“waste not,” the prohibition against wastefulness originating in Deuteronomy 20:19. This verse gave rise to two worldviews: one which was prioritized of not destroying the environment out of compassion for the non-human world, and another marginalized worldview that emphasized a self-concerned environmentalism which equates harm to the environment as self-harm. Privileging this latter worldview creates a pathway to advance Jewish legal discourse and align it with mainstream environmentalism.

Quantitative Distribution of Verbal Structures with Reference to the Authorship Factor in Legal Stylistics

The paper aims at describing the findings and conclusions formulated in the analysis of the authorship factor in legal discourse. It is hypothesised that verbal structures show systemically varied distribution across legal discourse and the relevant distinctions run through the authorship categories. When it comes to the aim of the research it draws on the tradition of sociolinguistic methodology targeting issues related to language variation which follows the basic assumptions of functional grammar. From the point of view of the material covered by the analysis it contributes to the research on legal discourse and specifically on its specialised domain referred to as corporate, company or business discourse. It provides additional empirical data pointing to the non-homogeneity of the legal style and formal distinctions originating from rich contextual background. The study is conducted on the material of a custom-designed corpus of English legal texts, classified as secondary genres. Methodologically, the study makes use of the tenets of supervised search of digitalised corpora and automatic data extraction based on discrete units, subsequent identification of recurring longer contiguous and/or non-contiguous sequences, if any, built around the axis of specific verbal structures and finally qualitative comparative analysis (characterisation) of the material. The discussion presents sample data and focuses on the most salient categories, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The inductive approach confirms the formal divergencies in the communicative situation covered by the analysis. The findings encapsulate patterns and tendencies in the quantitative distribution of verbal structures depending on the authorship category. It may be concluded that authorship is a factor delineating distinctions as regards (i) the repertoire of grammatical instruments exploited (verbal structures), which contributes to the specific stylistic profile of given authors. This shows that the thesis posed is verified positively and the study shows further, more detailed distinctions running through groups of subcategories distinguished within the authorship categories specified upon the start of the research.