REPRESENTATION OF LEGAL DISCOURSE IN THE GENRE OF INFORMAL STORIES IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH

Abstract

The article examines the representation of legal discourse in the contemporary media sphere, using the example of the genre of “legal stories” on multi-user portals in both the Russian – and English-language segments of the Internet. The audience of such portals is extremely broad and often involves integration with other platforms: stories are copied from there and posted on social media and Telegram channels, thereby expanding their reach. Adapting texts on legal practice to the needs of a wider audience, the authors make syntactic, morphological, and lexical transformations. Syntactically, complex sentences with numerous grammatical stems alternate with short constructions using ellipsis. Morphologically, non-isosemic constructions and words characteristic of professional legal discourse are transformed into isosemic ones: for example, verbs in conjugated forms are used instead of verbal nouns. The English-language internet also revealed “legal stories” presented in professional language with supporting references, which are absent from Russian-language multi-user portals. A distinctive feature of Russian-language discourse, in turn, is the structuring of stories – division into chapters with subheadings – which is not present in the English-language segment.