PSYCHOSEMANTIC STUDY OF TERMINOLOGICAL REPRESENTING A LAW CONCEPT BY LAWYERS AND NON-LAWYERS

PSYCHOSEMANTIC STUDY OF TERMINOLOGICAL REPRESENTING A LAW CONCEPT BY LAWYERS AND NON-LAWYERS

Author:  N.P. Glinskaya

Affiliation:  Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov

Abstract: 
The purpose of this study was to reveal the subjective semantic space of the metalinguistic consciousness of a subject via semantic differential methods.
53 adult interviewees ( 31 lawyers and 21 non-lawyers) evaluated three variants of Russian legal terms representing the same law concept FRANCHISING using 18 pairs of bipolar adjectives on seven point scales, with each asessement being performed on a different day.
It was assumed that the choice of connotative and denotative attributes (good – bad, precise – vague, valid – invalid, useful – useless, etc.) would reflect the subject’s picture of the law term quality. The collected data were processed by descriptional and multidimensional statistics procedures. Factor analysis gives the researchers an opportunity to find out the groups of interdependent features and provides them with a relatively small number of semantically invariant categories.
The results of this psychosemantic experiment show that there is a statistically significant discrepancy in assessing the terminological representation of the concept FRANCHISING by lawyers and non-lawyers. The research also demonstrates the cognitive complexity of semantic spaces and the nature of underlying categorical structures.

Keywords:  law concept, legal term, terminological variant, psychosemantic study

References: 
Abdullaeva, M.M. Psikhosemanticheskie modeli professional'noy deyatel'nosti. In I.B. Khanina & D.A. Leont'ev (Eds.), Psikhologiya sub"ektivnoy semantiki: Istoki i razvitie. Moscow: Smysl, 2011. P. 354-378.
Abdullaeva, M.M., & Glinskaya, N.P. Osobennosti otsenki kachestva perevoda predstavitelyami raznykh professional'nykh grupp. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo lingvisticheskogo universiteta. Seriya: psikhologicheskie nauki, 2010, 7 (586), 59-78.
Klimov, E.A. Vvedenie v psikhologiyu truda. Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskogo universiteta, 2004. 
Kubits, G.V. Professionalizatsiya yazykovoy lichnosti (na primere yuridicheskogo diskursa): dis. … kand. filol. nauk. Chelyabinsk; Moscow: RGB, 2005.
Lebedeva, N.B. O metayazykovom soznanii yuristov i predmete yurislingvistiki: (k postanovke problemy). In N.D. Golev (Ed.), Yurislingvistika-2: Russkiy yazyk v ego estestvennom i yuridicheskom bytii: mezhvuzovskiy sbornik nauchnykh trudov: Barnaul, 2000. P. 56-72.
Malyukova, E.V. Yuridicheskaya terminologiya v sistemotsentricheskom i antropotsentricheskom aspektakh: dis. … kand. filol. nauk. Biysk: RGB, 2005.
Serkin, V.P. Metody psikhosemantiki: uchebnoe posobie dlya studentov vuzov. Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2004. 
Khanina, I.B. Dinamika professional'noy semantiki kak pokazatel' formirovaniya professional'nogo mira. In I.B. Khanina, & D.A. Leont'ev (Eds.), Psikhologiya sub"ektivnoy semantiki: Istoki i razvitie. Moscow: Smysl, 2011. P. 354-378.

Pages:  15-21