I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

linguistic axiology, axiosphere, academic legal discourse, nominative units, value dominant, American law, English law

The article presents the results of a linguistic and axiological comparison of nominative paradigms in American and British academic legal discourse. The purpose of the study was to identify and compare legal value dominants, as well as national-specific ways of their verbalization within two nominative systems. The relevance of the work is determined by the necessity to study the linguistic mechanisms of manifestation of axiological elements in professional discourse, which is significant for linguistics, discourse analysis, and comparative linguoculturology. The empirical base was formed by an equal-proportional sample of nominative units (titles of sections, chapters, paragraphs) from authentic university textbooks on the law of the USA and the UK. The analysis of the sample was carried out by means of a complex of methods within the discourse-axiological approach, namely, linguo-axiological and discourse analysis, in combination with the methods of quantitative calculation and comparative interpretation. As a result, it has been established that the axiosphere transmitted through the nominative system of American discourse has a hierarchical structure and is verbalized through declarative-guaranteeing nominative constructions, while the British axiosphere is organized horizontally and is represented through the nomination of precedents and abstract concepts, reflecting the opposition between the models of “law as a guarantee” and “law as a process”. The article concludes that specific nominative strategies as well as lexical and syntactic features are determined by the differences in legal traditions, which contributes to the theory of linguistic manifestation of value dominants in institutional discourse.

Starostina, Yulia Sergeevna – Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of English Philology, Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1578-7590, juliatim@mail.ru

Isaeva, Olga Nikolaevna – Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of English Philology, Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia, https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6116-6644, Onis.77@mail.ru