Understanding Specialized Text Types and Communication Styles

Key Legal Terminology and Document Structures

Understanding Legal Judgments

A Judgment is a judicial decision that ends a dispute between several parties. It typically begins with a header containing general information, continues with recitals that relate the facts and legal arguments, and concludes with the ruling of the judicial authority.

The Structure of a Legal Instance (Request)

An Instance refers to a formal request made to obtain a specific benefit. Its typical structure includes:

• The applicant's details.
• Exposition of the reasons (facts and arguments).
• Petition for a specific object or request.
• Polite closing, place, date, and signature.
• Authorization by the Legal Administrative Quarter (LAQ).

Legislative Text Defined

A Legislative Text is formally defined as a law.

Characteristics of Specialized Text Types

Advertising Text Analysis

Advertising texts are designed to capture attention and persuade. Key elements include:

• Global Analysis: Examining harmony or contrast, and what draws attention.
• Typography: The choice and use of fonts.
• Imagery: Including flat colors, cinematic effects, the expressive power of faces, and proxemics (the relationship between characters, space, and product).
• Verbal Message Characteristics: Primarily serving a persuasive purpose with a referential function (describing the product).

Exploring Stylistic Language

Stylistic language encompasses various linguistic styles and figures. Its analysis often involves examining:

• Different styles of language.
• Stylistic figures (e.g., metaphors, similes).
• Typographical errors.
• Archaism (old words) and Neologisms (new words).
• Words from other languages and their origins.
• Use of interrogative sentences and appeals.

Administrative Legal Text Features

Morphology of Administrative Legal Texts

• Abundance of modal verbs and periphrasis (e.g., "deben", "can").
• Use of the future imperative (e.g., "drafted"), present tense with future value (e.g., "are right"), and future subjunctive (e.g., "guilty").
• Frequent use of conjunctive, prepositional, and adverbial phrases.

Syntactic Features of Administrative Legal Texts

• Long, complex sentences with subordinate clauses.
• Frequent use of temporal, causal, and final verb forms.
• Infrequent use of personal subjects, with a prevalence of periphrastic passive constructions.

Semantic Characteristics of Administrative Legal Texts

• Frequent use of abstract nouns in a broad and general sense (e.g., "freedom", "justice").
• Scarce use of precise or evaluative adjectives (e.g., "suspect").
• Common use of abbreviations and acronyms (e.g., "BOJA").
• Prevalence of nominalizations (replacing verbs with nouns to describe processes).

Legal Technique in Administrative Texts

• Incorporation of ordinary language words (e.g., "innocent", "guilty").
• Use of compounds or derivatives with fixed prefixes or classical roots (e.g., "homicide").
• Terms derived from fundamental legal roots (e.g., "legis-law").

Scientific and Technical Text Characteristics

Morphology of Scientific and Technical Texts

• Use of the third person and timeless present tense (e.g., "target").
• Presence of modal verb forms (e.g., "having to do", "should do").
• Use of the first person plural of modesty (implying the receiver).

Syntactic Features of Scientific and Technical Texts

• Predominance of declarative sentences (referential function).
• Frequent inclusion of interrogative sentences for didactic purposes or to add value.
• Use of structures where the executor does not appear (impersonal passive).
• A trend towards nominalization (preferring nouns to describe phenomena and qualities).

Lexicon of Scientific and Technical Texts

• Preference for relational and descriptive adjectives.
• Inclusion of technical terms (e.g., Anglicisms, Gallicisms, Latinisms, eponyms, specialized words from ordinary language).
• Presence of hypernyms (e.g., "day") and hyponyms (e.g., "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday").