The Linguistic and Legal Nature of the Email (from the Practice of Forensic Linguistic Expertise)

Abstract

The article presents an illustration of linguo-expert practice. The text of the email is analyzed in order to identify negative information, verify the nature of the expression of the statement in the form of a statement of facts or value judgment, determine the level of offensiveness of the phrase and its representation in the form of a threat. The specific research material is an Internet text functioning in the field of digital business correspondence. The analysis procedure reflected in the article demonstrates the use of traditional methods in linguo-expert practice: propositional, contextual, distributive and lexico-semantic description of words and expressions. The presented piece of linguistic expertise serves as an illustration of the content-semantic and formal-linguistic study of the conflict text in the framework of the trial. The result of the description is the identification of linguistic markers of a legal nature: the presence of negative information verbalized in the form of an assertion, and offensive expressions aimed at abasement of human dignity of the subjects of the statement. The applied significance of the study is determined both by the expansion of linguistic expert practice and the possibility of using the results as preventive measures aimed at reducing speech aggression in the field of business Internet communication.