Informal evaluation of unlawful deception as an ethno-cultural feature of the Russian legal language consciousness: A diachronic analysis

The article focuses on ethno-cultural patterns of the development of Russian legal language consciousness. The hypothesis about the comprehension of legal concepts through a prism of ethnical moral values by commonplace and official legal consciousness was tested. The uncertainty category, which is recognized as one of the key signs of Russian mentality, is chosen for verification of ethno-linguo-cultural specificity of the official legal consciousness. The research material was obtained from the basic legal acts, the validity period of which covers about four centuries. Special attention is paid to the era of Europeanization of the state, during which the core of the legal language did not experience modernization, preserving ethno-cultural identity. The object of the study is informal nominations of the concept “unlawful deception”, which have a moral and religious connotation. In the research, a complex of linguistic methods was used: intent-analysis of the documents, contextual and valence analysis, definitional and component analysis, lingual and cognitive interpretation. Relationships of free variation and additionality between terminology and indirect nominations, as well as dominance of indirect nominations, have been revealed. Informal nomination, based on the uncertainty category, was characterized by a lack of direct connection to the concept “law” and was a traditional ethnic model of speech behavior. Semantic diffusion is related to the dialogue orientation of legislative documents within the framework of the ethno-cultural system of values and antivalues (truth/untruths, deception, lies, righteousness/unrighteousness, justice/injustice, good/evil, conscience, soul), according to which “lukavstvo”, “kovarstvo”, “dushevredstvo” are mutually agreed. The image of the subject of unlawful deception was modeled as an antipode to the standard of an honest person. The official cognitive structure “deception as an unlawful phenomenon” is not differentiated from the moral-religious cognitive structure “deception as an immoral phenomenon”. Ethno-culturally marked nominations reflect the tendency of the legal language consciousness to determine unlawful behavior by immoral qualities of the individual. The confirmed hypothesis allows correcting the concept of Russian legal nihilism. The results can be used in lexicographic, didactic and educational work, socio-cultural project activities. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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