Interpretation of the Concept Gender in Legal Discourse

Abstract

It is commonly accepted that the language of law is often considered to be a highly traditional and, to a certain extent, a conservative means of professional communication, which tends to be stereotypically viewed impenetrable by the layman. Various peculiarities of the language of law and the fact that many legal systems differ all over the world in terms of their origins and frameworks often make legal discourse difficult to comprehend. To communicate professionally, the English language for instrumental purposes is increasingly employed at international level. Considering the above stated, the present study aims at analysing selected areas of the language of law. More specifically, using a case study, it finds its research interest in revealing the many-faceted nature of the concept gender within the framework of its contextual meaning established in specialist discourse. It has been concluded that due to the fact that gender is a polysemic concept in English, the translation in Latvian has more than three possible variants: dzimums, socialais dzimums, dzimte, sociala dzimte and dzenders, depending on the context of use in the respective normative legal act. Moreover, within the context of the social theory of gender, the proposed translations in Latvian could be either the neologism sociala dzimte or dzenders.

Keywords

• applied linguistics
• interdisciplinarity
• legal discourse
• social context
• interpretation
• gender