Russian Linguistic Bulletin (Dec 2020)
SPECIFIC LANGUAGE OF THE LEGAL DISCOURSE IN THE MASS MEDIA
Abstract
The article elicits the specifics of the language form of texts functioning in the legal sphere of communication as represented in the mass media. The purpose of the study is to analyze the manifestation of legal discourse in media discourse and to identify typical models of interdiscursive interaction of hybrid texts. The research material was the American TV series “Suits”. We chose two fragments of the pilot episode for analysis, as well as a fragment of episode 13 of the second season “Zane vs Zane”. As elements of legal discourse, terms and term combinations related to the legal sphere are identified. Another linguistic marker of legal discourse is normative evaluation in the texts, typically expressed by evaluative adjectives. Within the framework of media discourse, abbreviations, lexemes of the informal stylistic register, syntactic parallelism, metonymy and metaphor as two mechanisms of nomination with a relatively high frequency of manifestation, the use of phrasal verbs, the use of intensifying particles, and parcellation for the purposes of emphasis were singled out as repeating elements. All of these tools are combined with scenarios and frames of typical situations in the field of legal relations. With the general formality of the communicants’ interaction, it is the linguistic means that make it possible to make the essence of the communicative situation understandable and accessible to the mass audience. In this way, legal texts receive publicist processing. The legal sublanguage revealing itself in the mass media is a dynamic phenomenon. Under the influence of the factor of the double communicative cortege, there is a mixture of legal discourse and media discourse, the most striking implementation of which is the use of specific language means and the expansion of the range of semantic content of nominative units.
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