The Notion of Threat in Linguistic and Legal Expert Understanding and in Belarusians’ Naïve Linguistic Picture of the World

Abstract

In our research we perform a comparative analysis of the category of threat in the scientific and naïve pictures of the world. In the former case we treat threat as an object of research in modern linguistic text evaluation, in the latter – as a concept reflected in the naïve language consciousness. The analysis is based on the characteristics of the parametric forensic linguistic model of threat as defined in article 186 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, namely offences committed verbally, and on the survey data collected from individuals residing in Vitebsk Region (100 respondents). The methodological basis of our study comprises methods of parameterization, a survey, the comparative method as well as statistical tools for preparing and processing the resultant survey information. As a result, the research provides a detailed description of identification parameters of threat as they are defined by the Belarusian national legislation: 1) type of offensive action; 2) subjectivity of action; 3) targetness; 4) temporal markedness. The attempt to construct a parametric model of threat as a phenomenon of everyday language consciousness is based on the results gathered from the survey conducted on residents of Vitebsk Region (60 female respondents: 40 – urban residents, 20 – rural residents; 40 – male respondents: 30 – urban residents, 10 – rural residents). The comparative analysis shows that there is a noticeable gap between the scientific and naïve perceptions of threat. Unlike the forensic linguistic model of threat, its perception by Belarusian individuals does not have identifiable features for markedness and is recognized at the intuitive level; the parameter that the naïve picture of the world regards as important is a harmful action. It also appears worthwhile to note that though there are no gender or age peculiarities in everyday perception of threat as an illegal action, it features distinct local specificity.