New forms of popularization of legal knowledge in popular legal discourse and its genres

Abstract

The article studies the way transformed traditional forms of popularization of legal knowledge in Russia impact the popular legal discourse. The form of popularization is perceived by the author as a permanent communicative model used by popularizers to increase legal awareness of non-specialists. Traditional forms of science popularization are subject to modification due to the emergence of new channels and means of communication. To interact with the target recipient, popularizers use a hybrid popular legal discourse, which enables them to disseminate legal knowledge in a comprehensible (adapted) form and maintain a steady interest of the community in legal issues. Depending on the communication channel used by the popularizer to convey the message to the audience, the author distinguishes a distant, distant-virtualized, monovirtual, contact-virtualized and contact types of popular legal discourse. Attention is drawn to the chronotope and participants of the types of discourse in question, as well as to the interdiscursive interaction in genre varieties of Russian popular legal discourse. Adapting to the changed conditions of communication, the polycode and hybridization potential of the popular legal discourse has reached a new level. In addition to informing the audience and shaping the public ideology, modern popular legal discourse also performs a recreational function. Entertainment is becoming an integral component of the texts of modern popular discourse, which makes it possible to gain and hold the attention of the public in a highly competitive environment.

Keywords

• legal awareness
• form of popularization
• transformation / virtualization
• type of popular legal discourse
• agent / popularizer
• communication channel
• recreational function
• polycode
• hybridization