Types of argumentative frames structuring the texts of court decisions

One of the relevant aspects of linguocognitive analysis at the present stage is the comprehension of the specifics of judicial argumentation, which is the core of legal judicial discourse. The study of the issues under consideration allows us to describe the ethno-conditioned traditions of argumentation in codified genres of institutional discourse. The court decision, at the same time, stands out as a special object of analysis, which is dictated by its cognitive-discursive specifics. The article examines the types of argumentative frame structures representing dictum and modus functions in the texts of court decisions based on the texts of decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. The analysis carried out in the course of the study is based on the idea of frame structuring of information, on the idea of the frame as a cognitive model underlying the mental processing of stereotyped situations, a structure that ensures the conventionality of language. The development of a metalanguage for describing argumentative frame slots is determined by the need to interpret argumentative structures of judicial discourse. It is fundamentally important, at the same time, to address the categories of dictum (content) and modus (operational) functions, the distribution of clusters of which embodies judicial discourse. The aspect of subjectivization, which correlates with the concepts of dictum and modus, acquires special importance due to the variability of the deployment of argumentation in the text of the court decision.

The description of argumentative frames structuring the texts of court decisions contributes to the differentiation of standards for the implementation of the mode category, reflected in the minds of native speakers as an objective reality, the distortion of which indicates differences in the communicative attitudes of the producer and the recipient. The analysis of the corpus of texts under study, carried out on the basis of the frame approach, made it possible to expand the ideas available in science about the types of argumentative frames that contribute to the interpretation of the texts of court decisions based on the specific metalanguage.

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