Suggestive Mechanisms in Legal Discourse

Abstract

This article is devoted to investigating the mechanisms of suggestive influence in plaintiff and defendant's opening statements. The terms "persuasion", "manipulation (suggestion)", "suggestive strategy" and "suggestive tactics" are analysed. It is stated that suggestion as a means of persuasion and manipulation on a psyche is possible only due to the existence of a certain mechanism which gives a person an opportunity to perceive the suggested influences and reflect them. According to the authors, the basic mechanisms of suggestion include the "attack" and "defensive" suggestive-psychological sequences in the construction of a speech, the application of which is based on the stages of "suggestion", "preparation and creation of the implementation of justice needed" and "the implantation of the necessary adjustment." The authors suppose that the analysis of an effective manipulation of professional opponents – a plaintiff and a defendant (some basic suggestive-psychological algorithms used at the opening statement as well as suggestive strategies, tactics and methods applied) might considerably enhance the perspectives of studying characteristic features of legal discourse thus allowing to get closer to the understanding of how a person's brain works as well as the nature of consciousness and subconsciousness together with the anthropocentric approach aimed at realization of manipulation/suggestion in the course of situational institutional communication.

Keywords

• suggestion
• inculcation
• legal discourse
• opening statement
• mechanism of influence