Glazkov A. V.

On coherence of legal discourse texts. Pp. 74–84.

UDC 811.161.1:34

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2024.84.3.009

 

Abstract. The article deals with the coherent relations arising among texts of legal discourse. Such discourse includes texts of normative legal acts (the core of discourse), texts of legal practice (the near-core area), as well as texts of other discourses containing information about legal relations (the peripheral area). It shows that the texts of normative legal acts possess features of three types of speech acts: directive, declarative and representational. The directive type is contained primarily in the sanctions of articles, the declarative one exists in strict definitions of terms and concepts, and the representative type is found in dispositions of articles. It is proved that the disposition has a narrative character, which allows creating coherent links between texts of different types. The narrative nature of disposition is illustrated by fragments from modern texts, where noun groups with an apex verbal noun are usually used, and by examples from 19th-century texts, where standard narrative constructions are available. For our analysis, we used the method of textual groups: any combinations of sentences, to which we applied the tools of analyzing the categories of textuality, including coherence, understood as a category reflecting logical consistency between sentences. The study was carried out in the area of situational semantics. It is shown that the dispositional text contains a representation of matrix situational type, where the main element is the relations between objects, and not vice versa, which is typical for a narrative. Coherent relations between texts are illustrated in journalistic texts describing offenses and fragments from criminal sentences. It is revealed that within the framework of legal discourse there are special coherent relations between texts, consisting in the fact that the polysituationality embedded in the text of a normative legal act forms restrictions for coherent relations between texts, expressed in the strict situational correspondence of the text of law enforcement to the text of the law article.

 

Keywords: discourse, coherence, narrative, legal discourse, speech act, situational semantics, text, textuality.

 

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