Legal Linguistics as a University Academic Course (Case Study of University Textbooks and Master’s Programs in the Russian Federation): Aspect Approach

Abstract

The article discusses the prerequisites and the current state of legal linguistics as a university academic course. The topic "Legal linguistics at university" covers three substantial areas in the article: legal, linguistic and pedagogical. The history and modernity of legal linguistics are noted and traced in several social statuses: legal linguistics as practice, as a research area, and finally, legal linguistics as a separate course included in the system of higher education and forming a major in educating lawyers and philologists at university. We intend to show in the article the origins and evolution of this phenomenon. The central issue of the work concerns the entry of legal linguistics into the system of higher education. Among the particular objectives of the article is the presentation of the specifics of the development of educational literature for the course of "legal linguistics ". The specific research goal of the article is to conduct a multi-aspect analysis of the structure and modalities of university textbooks in legal linguistics published and used in educational process. This work is a case study of a range of educational literature in legal linguistics, as issued from 2000 to the present. The article provides its aspect review. The main subject under consideration is the modality and structure of the educational edition; the main aspect of the study results from the thesis: the structure and modality of an educational edition is largely determined not only by its type (genre), but also by the target audience to which it is addressed (philologists, lawyers, experts, general readers).