legal terminology

The article deals with the problem of sociogenic factors’ influence on shaping of linguistic pictures of the world from the historical point of view with the example of the pictures of the world of law and jurisprudence in languages possessing different structural properties. Special attention is paid to one of the disputable issues of terminological studies – manifestation of cultural identity of terms.

The article examines, in the case of legal practice in Canada, the questions of adapting to each other two terminology systems in English and French.

The article deals with one of the complex issues of terminology – the problem of structural and semantic features of nomenclature signs coined with the help of proper names on the material of the terminological systems of the Anglo-American, international public, European law and the Organization of American States. On the basis of the analysis of the nomenclature units represented by the names of legal precedents, and taking into account the existing classifications of proper names, characteristic features of legal nomenclature signs were revealed.

The article deals with different variants of the legal picture of the world emerging in the literary English language and its sociolects (terminology and jargon). The analysis shows that the diversity of the linguistic legal picture depends on the social and functional stratification of the language and various extra-linguistic factors.

Legal terms are not uniform at the international level, but they are closely connected with a national legal system. This implies serious conceptual inconsistencies. The above-mentioned systemic connection leads to the fact that either boundaries of terms’ meanings belonging to diff erent jurisdictions or the degree of their explication may vary.