The Research of Legal Discourse Based on Discourse Complexology

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of legal discourse, taking into account the latest achievements of the current paradigm of modern interdisciplinary research, i.e. discourse complexology. Emergence of this theoretical paradigm was facilitated by the research of languages from the standpoint of their complexity and the development of methods for quantifying the complexity of texts. Based on the analysis of approaches to the study of language complexity and text complexity, the author suggests a possible adaptation of methodological techniques of discourse complexology to the analysis of not only inter-linguistic, but also intra-linguistic comparisons, for example, to the analysis of professional types of discourse. It is stated that, by analogy with the existence of different levels of complexity among different languages, different types of professional discourse can also be characterized by different degrees of complexity. The scientific novelty of the research lies in initiating the analysis of legal discourse from the standpoint of discourse complexology. Considering the complex nature of communication within legal discourse, the author applies a research concept that describes three models of interaction within a certain type of discourse: “language–communicant”, “language–language”, “language–discourse”. Based on the analysis of the research material, as well as taking into account the theoretical developments of discourse complexology, the author develops a preliminary classification of the parameters of legal discourse complexity, which includes phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical and semantic parameters. It is concluded that further study of legal discourse and other professional types of discourse, taking into account the latest achievements of discourse complexology, will contribute to the development of a typology of professional types of discourse from the standpoint of their complexity, as well as the practical application of the results obtained in various linguistic and pragmatic conditions.

Keywords

• discourse complexology
• legal discourse
• text complexity
• discourse complexity
• complexity parameters
• complexity predictors