Text definition problems

1.3. Different approaches to study legal texts.
In this paper, a legal text is understood as a text containing legal information. When considering a written legal text, you can divide it into several types:: 1) pedagogical, 2) academic, 3) judicial, 4) legislative (N. A. Komina, 1990:122). The pedagogical legal text is represented by law textbooks, which differ from textbooks in other disciplines in the way they represent legal provisions and relevant court cases (U. K. B11a11a, 1987). Investigating the role of court cases in comments and explanations in textbooks, N. A.Comyn (1990:122) points out that the more the text moves from description to discussion, the more references to court cases appear. It should be noted that even within the framework of a particular law textbook, there can be significant variations in the rhetorical structuring of a legal text, depending on the origin of the point of view on a particular legal provision (either this is a precedent or a law introduced by the legislature).
Academic legal texts are journal articles. Studies of this type of text are not numerous, but it can be assumed that it will have the main features of scientific journal articles: emotional and evaluative neutrality, bookishness and unambiguity of the language tools used, explicit presentation, compositional clarity. The leading pragmatic attitude of an academic legal text, as well as scientific texts of other types, will be "the attitude to a clear, unambiguous and consistent message to the reader... scientific content of the text" (V. L. Naer, 1915:17).
The judricial text includes two types of legal documents::court decisions ( sentences) and court cases. Almost all of them havea typical text organization that is unique in this genre. Court cases they differ from other types of legal text not only in their construction, but also in their content and how they are read and interpreted.The subject of this study is legal entitieslegislative texts that are represented by laws and agreements,charters, contracts, etc.There is no clear reference in the linguistic literature legal texts refer to a specific type of text.For example, according to E. E. Anisimova (1994), the legislative text should. I. B. Rupert (1996) classifies legislative texts as appellate texts,regulatory texts (texts that regulate social relations),"the subject of legislative regulations is the regulation of actions active subjects with volitional attitudes" (I. B. Rupert, 1996: 14).The text of a legislative act is considered to be the text regulatingsocial relations, and the conceptual basis of regulatory relations.texts are a model of causation of the addressee's behavior by means of imposing a certain standard of behavior on him, which consists ofsemantic elements "purpose of action" and "method of action" (I. B. Rupert,1996:14). The author believes that this distinguishes regulatory texts from directives.,which, as a rule, do not contain any indication of the method of action.
In this study, we take the point of view of those scientists who whether legal and legislative texts are classified as directive texts (k.Oshzeg, 1979;W. Fleischeg, O. M1cIe1, 1977, etc.), justifying this by the fact that the main goal-setting of legislative texts - prescribe specific tasks to the addressee.Juridicalrules and norms of behavior and encourage them to comply with laws and orders,sent by the addressee, - matches the directive function.
The functional essence of any text can be represented as a system of functions, the core of which is a hierarchy of three functions:
social, system and regulatory .
The social function of the text is carried out in the system of communicative
an act that combines the communicative activities
of communicating people into an organized whole with the help of a text. The system function
consists in the organization of each individual act of speech communication in
the form of a naturally organized system. The regulatory function of the text
is expressed in the fact that through the recipient's perception of the message, the text
controls his communicative activity in a certain way,
determines it from the point of view of ideal content, quantity and character
speech-thinking actions, their structure, mutual coupling, motivation,
the final product of activity, etc. The implementation of this function makes
it possible for the act of communication to unfold into a naturally organized
system of full composition and thereby ensure the organization of social
interaction of people by speech means. Thus, it can be assumed that any text, by virtue
of its regulatory function, can be called regulatory.
For example, texts -congratulations, condolences can be defined as
texts regulating interpersonal relations (R.V.Shilenko, 1988:117), and
can also be classified as regulatory. But each text, in addition
to performing these general textual functions, has a basic
communicative function (goal setting), according to which it
can be attributed to a certain type of texts (see Chapter 1, paragraph 3.1).
So far, legislative texts have not been subjected to a comprehensive
linguistic analysis:
Representatives of the stylistic approach refer legal texts to
the works of the official business style, which serves
the administrative and legal sphere of public activity, is implemented
mainly in writing, has a minimum of subjectively
colored elements due to functioning in standard official
situations. Researchers of the official business style consider this
style as being implemented primarily in legislative texts, therefore,
according to their opinion, from the general content of the official business function
the style-obligation stems from the imperative, the main, as these
linguists believe, stylistic trait (A.A.Ushakov, M.N.Kozhina, T.M.Veselovskaya, etc.).

В рамках прагматического подхода исследование юридического текста
находится на начальной стадии разработки (Р.Ооо эпс, 1987; Р.Вашего,
1989,1990; И.Б.Руберт, 1996).
Сейчас появляется новый взгляд на юридический текст, который ставит под
сомнение однозначность интерпретации языка закона (Р.СооёпсЬ, 1987). С
традиционной философской точки зрения, язык закона является универсальным
кодом, который при правильной интерпретации гласит истину. Понятие "истина"
понимается как соответствие знания действительности (ФЭС, 1989:231).
Юридический текст традиционно воспринимается как нечто идеальное, которое
можно истолковать только однозначно, однако не принимается во внимание тот
факт, что юридический текст - это исторически сложившаяся общественная
структура.
Within the framework of the pragmatic approach, the study of the legal text
is at the initial stage of development (p.EPS LLC, 1987; R.Vash,
1989,1990; I.B.Rupert, 1996).
Now there is a new look at the legal text, which calls into
question the unambiguity of the interpretation of the language of the law (R.Soeps, 1987). From
the traditional philosophical point of view, the language of the law is a universal
code that, if interpreted correctly, states the truth. The concept of "truth"
is understood as the correspondence of knowledge to reality (FES, 1989:231).
A legal text is traditionally perceived as something ideal, which
it can only be interpreted unambiguously, however, the
fact that the legal text is a historically established social structure is not taken into account.
According to R.LLC enp (1987), any legal text has
"many meanings", and when studying it, it is necessary to perceive the language of law
as a historically organized structure, and not as a universal and
unambiguous code. In addition, the rhetoric should concern not only the debate about
the correctness of the theory of law, but also consider the legal text from the point
of view of social development and public practice.
I.B.Rupert (1996) examines the structural, semantic,
and pragmatic features of the formation and development of legislative texts
acts from the standpoint of a culturological approach, "according to which, when
studying a text in diachrony, not only the systematization of facts is important, but,
above all, an explanatory orientation, including the search for cultural
and historical prerequisites explaining the evolutionary changes of the text"
(I.B.Rupert, 1996:1).
Based on the existing studies of the legal text within the framework
of the functional-pragmatic approach, it is possible to identify the main
requirements for the legal text:
1. In accordance with the main communicative purpose of the legal
text - to influence the addressee and encourage (not) to commit
a certain action - this text is characterized by imperativeness and
persuasiveness

2. The necessary features of a legal text are completeness and
timeliness of information, accuracy and conciseness, since the main
task of the addressee is to reflect the information that acquires
legal force very clearly.
3. Standardization (terminologization) is also characteristic of
legal text, as it provides an unambiguous understanding
of the information by the addressee. The possibility of standardization arises as
a consequence of standard, typed situations in the legal sphere
of communication.
4. Objectivity is explained by the fact that the addressee acts in the legal
text as a carrier of a certain social role. The absence of a personal
attitude to the subject of the statement leads to the elimination of subjective
modality.

5. Clarity is the main requirement for a legal text, where
the main thing is the transmission of information that must be conveyed to the addressee in clear and, moreover, in an official form.
6. Formality is also an integral feature of the legal text and it is explained, first of all, by the official situation in which
communication takes place, and not by the social status of the addressee and the addressee, their relations
with each other and the neutral
attitude to the utterance adopted for the legal sphere of communication.
In this study, legal texts are understood
only as legislative texts (texts in which legal information
presented in the form of laws, regulations, etc.), which we refer to
directive type of texts in accordance with their communicative
purpose.
Since we have referred the legal legislative text to
directive type of texts, there is a need for its characteristics
as a type of directive texts.
The main communicative and pragmatic components of the legal
text are the following.
The addressee acts here as a bearer of a social role, endowed
with state powers and, therefore, personifying
the state. The legal text requires only an objective statement
of the facts, whatever the attitude to this fact of the
the sender of the information. The absence of a personal attitude to the subject
of the statement leads to the elimination of subjective modality.
Since all directive texts are appellate, including legal
texts, an important role in the organization of a legal text is played
by the focus on the addressee. The social status of the addressee and the addressee
is not the same in these texts. The sender of the information is a lawyer with
a special education, and the recipient of the information can be as a specialist with a legal education, as well as any person who, due
to the circumstances, turned to a legal text, since the
information is aimed at an indefinite wide range of persons.
"The legislative statement does not concern specific persons and actions, but
certain categories of persons and actions. Predicates have no temporal
localization, but express the connection of the content of the text with the present and
project it into the plan will be]; it " (I.B.Rupert, 1996:18).
The results of the conducted research show that the legal
text is based mainly on substantive and factual
information. The presence of only one type of information is explained by the fact that
the illocutionary effect is predetermined by the direct meaning of the utterance, i.e.
the pragmatic effect of the text follows directly from the semantics
of textual linguistic units.
Information in legal texts is provided cyclically. This is achieved
due to the lfollowing components are included as mandatory attributes of the text of a modern English legislative act
: "full title, short title,
number, which is affixed after the adoption of the draft by parliament,
preamble, sections, parts, articles, marginal notes, appendix" (I.B.Rupert,
1996:15).
onomasiological and orienting functions. The short title is specifically
specified in a subsequent article to facilitate reference to the
statute. The mandatory component of the title is the date of adoption of the law
(British Museum Act, 1963).
The preamble sets out the intentions of the drafters, but the informative
function in this part is not fully implemented. The actual
information is contained in the chapters, sections,
subsections or paragraphs following the preamble, which are numbered using
special fonts. The cohesive "staples" of parts of the legal text
are, in addition to numbering and alphanumeric abbreviations, various
types of recurrence (and any such person, any other person, etc.), the declared
use of connectors, which are various conjunctions
and reasonable words, special designations (if, then, until, who,
which, provided that, further, the above, previously mentioned).

I.B.Rupert (1996:32) notes that a distinctive feature of the coherence
of the legislative text is "the absence of coreferent substitutions in it, which
is dictated by the requirement to observe the accuracy of the legislative word,
to prevent ambiguity of interpretations."
Each element in the communicative structure of an illocutionary act
corresponds to certain linguistic principles of its organization.
The linguistic means of expressing pragmatic content in
directive legal texts are:
1. Imperative constructions: a) corresponding to direct directive
speech acts (verb form in the imperative mood):
1. Record correctly the profits and losses and tax liabilities of the Company for
those financial periods
6) corresponding to indirect directive speech acts (non
-personal verb forms and future tense forms):
1. The Company will on demand pay to the Lender all money and liabilities.

2. The Tenant covenants with the Landlord as follows: a) to pay rent... b) to keep

interior... c) to perform and observe all the covenants and conditions.
2. A specific feature of legal texts reflecting
the influence of a pragmatic orientation on the structure of the text is
the presence of conditional constructions in them. The most common for the legal
text is the following: if a social norm or
prescription is violated, then punishment should follow.
If the Customer establishes that any goods are defective, the Company shall replace with similar goods.
The mandatory components of conditional constructions are the nomination
object and subject of action:thief - victim", "landlord - tenant" and etc.
3. Another signal of the directive function is modal
verbs:
The Company may deliver goods to the Customer.
The Grantor shall not allow or permit any other machine selling the same goods....
4. В юридических текстах предпочтение отдается использованию перформативных глаголов в пассиве:
As can be seen from the above, the legal text, indeed,
has communicative and pragmatic characteristics inherent
in directive texts due to the specifics of the legal sphere
of communication.
The pragmatic content determines the choice of linguistic means, which
are represented in these texts by imperative and conditional constructions,
modal verbs, performative verbs in the passive voice.