КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЕ СОБЫТИЙНОСТИ В СУДЕБНЫХ РЕЧАХ РУССКИХ АДВОКАТОВ КОНЦА XIX – НАЧАЛА XX В.

Abstract

The article is focused on the analysis of event construction in courtroom speeches presented by Russian lawyers in the late 19th – early 20th century from rhetorical and narrative perspectives. The first part of the article is devoted to the development of judicial rhetoric after the reform of Alexander II (1864). It was strongly influenced by realistic writing tradition, which could not but contribute to the adoption of various literary strategies, including the approach to narration and representation of events. In the second part, we turn to the features common both for events in fiction and events that lie in the core of courtroom speech narrative. During the jury trials, narrative not only represented the human experience but also interpreted it and enabled lawyers to construct stories final parts of which could be consummated only by the verdict of the jury. It is concluded that the blurred line between real and constructed event made the narrative closure fundamentally important for the jury. Their choice of ending not only defined the position of the accused in one of the semantic fields but also created an illusion that the lenient sentence could approximate the reality to the utopian model of the world based on Christian values. In conjunction with the rhetorical strategies used by lawyers in courtrooms, the specific features of event construction could influence the decision-making of the jury.