Expressive modification of terms in modern legislative discourse (by the example of the German Criminal Code)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of various linguistic ways and means acting as textual expressiveness in German criminal provisions. The aim of the research is to identify the expressive capabilities of the legal language realised through an emotional-evaluative component embedded in the semantic content of terminological units in the analysed term system. The authors consider the features of subjectivism as a desire to achieve the aesthetics of a professional translation text enhancing affectivity, which manifests itself in the evaluative perception of certain actions and situations. At the same time, the scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the attempt made allows identifying and analysing the emotional and expressive features of the legal language taking into account the subjective interpretation of the content of legal concepts. As a result of the study, it has been found that the Criminal Code of Germany, despite the objective and dispassionate language peculiar to this form of actualisation of professional scientific discourse, is characterised by the presence of a sufficient amount of expressive vocabulary. The explicit methods of expressiveness verbalisation in this subject area include terminological definitions with a specific emotive meaning, attributive evaluative vocabulary, emphatic and metaphorical phrases.