Classification of legal terms

For a clearer description of legal terminological systems, it is necessary to develop a classification of terms in this subject area, and therefore, there is a need to choose the classification grounds. One of such grounds may be the factor of a word belonging to the sublanguage of a certain field of activity. Let us dwell on the previously developed classifications of legal terminology.

The classification developed by A.S. Pigolkin, it is carried out according to the vertical and horizontal principles. At the top of the vertical classification will be the terminology enshrined in the Basic Law and other legislative acts, that is, general legal terminology that unites terms used in all branches of law and denoting the broadest concepts.

Horizontal terminology encompasses various types of cross-industry and industry-specific terminology. Cross-sectoral terminology is the terms used in several branches of law ("liability", "significant damage", "misconduct", etc.).

A distinctive feature of the industry terminology is that it is based on subject-logical connections and relations of the corresponding concepts, reflecting the specifics of a particular sphere of legal relations. Consequently, sectoral terminology serves a special branch of legislation, that is, it forms a sectoral terminological field that does not coincide with either general legal or inter-sectoral terminological fields - broader in content and function ("transaction", "prescription of the crime", " divorce ", etc.).

We find a somewhat different classification in D.I. Miloslavskaya, who identifies the following groups of terms: commonly used; generally used, having a narrower, special meaning in a normative act; purely legal; technical. Commonly used terms are common, widespread names for objects, qualities, signs, actions, phenomena that are equally used in everyday speech, in fiction and scientific literature, in business documents, in legislation. Such terms are simple, generally understandable ("find", "mass poisoning", etc.).

The frequency of use of the terms under consideration is quite significant. Commonly used terms, however, are not always convenient. Their content is often ambiguous and allows for various interpretations. They can be used in one sense or in another. Therefore, the use of such terms is advisable if their meaning is obvious to everyone and does not give rise to any doubts in this context. Using commonly used terms in normative acts, the legislator must ensure their interpretation in one form or another, so that the meaning is extremely clear. Take, for example, the term "drunkenness." "A person who has committed a crime in a state of intoxication, - established by law, is not exempt from criminal liability." In practice, the question arises whether intoxication is associated with the use of only alcoholic beverages or drugs. The answer to this question is given by medical science, defining intoxication as a condition caused by the use of not only alcohol, but also drugs. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the concepts of alcoholism and drug addiction are not the same concepts. Therefore, an alcoholic and a drug addict, as an alcoholic drink and a drug, respectively, are not the same thing.

Like any other sphere of public life, jurisprudence cannot do without special terminology, which is specially developed by the legislator to regulate public relations. Special legal terms, as a rule, concisely and relatively accurately denote the concept used in jurisprudence ("plaintiff", "conviction", "penalty", "inquiry", etc.). However, their number is not so large, but despite this, they are quite often used in various documents of a legal nature. They are used to denote special concepts and only in jurisprudence.

In business documents and legislative texts, there are many such special legal terms, the meaning of which cannot always be explained solely from linguistic positions, for example, the term "legal entity". Indeed, literally, the word "person" refers to a person, and not to any organization or association. However, the use of such terms is justified, since from the point of view of their practical conventional use, they have the advantages of unambiguously defining specific legal concepts. The centuries-old tradition of their use should also be borne in mind.

Many terms that were created by the legislator and were originally purely legal, later became widespread in everyday life, in fiction, and are actively used outside of jurisprudence (“criminal”, “law”, “alimony”, etc.). They have ceased to be proper legal, have become commonplace. In legal documentation, many terms are used, borrowed from various fields of science, technology, art, as well as professionalism. In the literature, the name "technical terms" was assigned to them (for example, "slide", "microfarada", "phonogram"). In the process of applying the rule of law in various spheres of public life, it is often impossible to do without special technical terms. It is necessary to adhere to the rule that technical terms are used in the sense that is assigned to them in the relevant branch of knowledge.

Special legal and technical terms are very convenient: they unambiguously denote the desired concept, contribute to a clearer statement of regulatory prescriptions, thereby contributing to a more correct understanding and application of the latter. In other words, they maximally condense verbal information, save the means of transmitting legislative thought. With the help of such terms, uniqueness, semantic concreteness, completeness of legal formulations can be achieved. It is hardly advisable to replace special terms with detailed descriptive expressions, since this would lead to cumbersome regulations and business documents, and would complicate their application.

Of course, special terms should be used within the limits of semantic and informational necessity, without overloading documents with them. For example, the use of such terms is appropriate in special-purpose regulations for a limited number of specialists and inappropriate in acts that are designed for a wide range of citizens.

There is also a similar division in the legal literature, in which three types of legal terms are distinguished:

• 1)    common terms that are used in everyday speech and are understandable to everyone;

• 2)    special legal terms that have a special legal content ("letter of credit", "statement of claim", etc.). Such terms are used to denote legal concepts, expressions of legal constructions, industry typing, etc .;

• 3)    special technical legal terms that reflect the area of special knowledge, for example, safety regulations, equipment maintenance, technical solutions expertise, etc.

However, common terms can become legal. In order for special legal terms to become clear to all subjects of legal relations, the legislator uses norms that do not directly regulate public relations, but reveal the content of any legal terms. Such norms are called norms-definitions. The effectiveness of legal terms depends on how the legislator complies with a number of rules for legal terminology.

It is believed that, for the convenience of analysis, legal vocabulary can be divided into classes according to the method of concept nomination (terms, terminonyms, professionalisms). Another parameter is belonging to a certain branch of law, which gives grounds for classifying a lexeme as a general legal or branch lexicon (the meanings of branch terms can be adequately understood only in the subsystem of the corresponding branch of law). The third parameter of the classification of special vocabulary is the highlighting of realities, which are represented by toponyms, anthroponyms, appellatives and phraseological units: Old Baily - Old Bailey, Central Criminal Court, toponym by the name of the street in London where it is located; Miranda warning - the official announcement to the suspect of his rights, anthroponym by the name of the famous court case "Miranda v. Arizona" (1966); pocket veto - "pocket veto", an indirect veto of the President of the United States, an appellate (common noun).

The classification grounds for the belonging of a term to a certain class, for the method of nomination and for identifying the type of reality are relevant both for describing the terminological systems of one language and for contrastive studies. When comparing the legal terminology of the English and Russian languages, other classification features appear.