DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN INFORMAL LEGAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article examines means for constructing identities in legal informal discourse on Internet memes corpus. The aim of our research is to establish the regularities in the ways of identity constructions through the categorical oppositions and the stylistic means. The background of the research is the socio-constructionist and critical discourse-analysis approaches. We applied a methodology that integrates two approaches: a critical discourse analysis, as well as methods of humour analysis developed within the framework of a semantic approach to humour based on scripts (Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH)). This involved identifying the subject positions based on linguistic and contextual analysis; examination of universal ways of how identities are expressed in informal legal discourse. The focus of our analysis was on the stylistic means that implement a certain way of professional identity construction. Our analysis indicated that identities appear fragmentary and are constructed with the means of different discourses; the central one is the professional legal, which is compared or contrasted to everyday discourse, informal, advertising and even “mom’s” discourse. The list of linguistic resources varies from legal terminology and neutral vocabulary to colloquial and thieves’ and mothers’ slang and invective vocabulary. The study expands the field of knowledge about the ways, stylistic and linguistic means of constructing professional identity through various possibilities of discursive subjects positioning.