Methodology of the semantico-textual expert examination in documentary dispute cases

Abstract

The article discusses the approaches of forensic linguistics to the investigation of disputable sections of texts having juridical consequences (contracts of various types, acts, court decisions, bylaws, powers of attorney, testaments, resolutions, records, etc.). Despite the specific juridical status of the above documents, they have a number of common essential discourse features distinguishing them from other discourse milieus, such as colloquial, mass media, advertising, belles-lettres, etc.

The basic linguistic category underlying the methodology of linguistic expert examination is the concept of linguistic certainty, which is a linguistic correlate of the juridical category of legal certainty. Linguistic certainty presupposes that even if specific elements of the text or multiple interconnected texts do not provide for the communicative preciseness and unambiguous understanding of the text or its elements, taking into account broader legal discourse makes it possible to achieve such communicative preciseness through the application of a number of formalized linguistic procedures.

 

Linguistic expert examination proceeds from the presumption of the linguistic correctness of the document under investigation, which presupposes that the textual material corresponds to language norms in general and established discourse practices in particular, until the opposite has been proved. Communicative norm presumption enables well-reasoned arguments declining interpretations of the text based on ascribing meanings to the linguistic units that do not correspond to relevant discourse practices.

 

The pragmatics of juridical texts is determined by the performativeness of language units—that is, their ability not only to describe certain actions, but to verbally incorporate certain actions represented by corresponding performative verbs or verbal collocations. In certain texts, the tense and aspectual forms of the verbs are the principal indicators of concrete performative meanings as perceived against the background of the more generalized performative invariant represented by the genre of the document. Eventual discrepancy between the performative content of the analyzed textual segment, on the one hand, and the anticipated performative content as determined by established discourse practices, on the other hand, makes the juridical validity of the respective segment of the text highly questionable.