Popular legal discourse of English language mass media: From criminal news to legal websites

Abstract

The author analyzes popular legal discourse in the English language mass media and pays attention to its essential features and specific language. It is significant nowadays to conduct language studies in the field of Internet communication due to the ongoing process of digitalization of all aspects of human and social life. In the course of the research three types of English language legal TV programs are described: court room talk show, journalist investigation, criminal and police documentaries. The author analyzes several episodes of the most typical shows of every type. It is discovered that they all do not contain popular legal discourse and are aimed at entertaining the audience (rather than informing). The shows have legal matters as the subject and they are easily understood by ordinary lay people, but it is not correct to call them explanatory. Most of the shows contain semi — legal and legal information, which can be practically useful. The author also examines English language legal discourse on the Internet to compare it with the shows mentioned earlier. He focuses on the most visited websites and assesses explanatory texts on the topic of landlord — tenant relationship. The article contains examples of two texts on the topic. The first one is from a private legal firm`s website (USA), the second was taken from the official Victoria state legal aid website (Australia). A number of popular legal discourse features are explored and several specific language features are described. The author makes a number of conclusions about the essence and language characteristics of legal TV shows and website texts.