Characteristics of discourse of law: boundaries, content, parameters

The paper made a review of different convictions on the discourse as a complex phenomenon being subject for the combined studies. The study explored mental, substance-specific, procedural and linguistic boundaries of the discourse of law, the substance of it and dimensions as well; and made a description of linguistic features specific for an American English discourse of law, with a definition of American English discourse of law provided. The discourse of law represents a specific type of institutional discourse (an occupation-specific shoptalk), with a semiotic domain characterized by the set of verbal and non-verbal signs (with their verbal equivalents), all these creating both institutional and non-institutional communication patterns, where an agent, an addressee and the substance (or at least either of the mentioned components) refer to the domain of law and/ or occur at the intersection of the discourse of law with other types of discourse (e.g. historic discourse, or political one, or educational or military ones), with the mass-media discourse, or the discourse of fiction, etc.