TERMINOLOGICAL APPARATUS OF CRIMINAL EXAMINATIONS

Abstract

The article reveals the peculiarities of terminology in the texts of forensic examinations. The essence of the problem of expanding the scientific understanding of the trends in the development of the language of forensic examinations is revealed. Methodological recommendations for improving the practice of using forensic terminology have been developed. As is evident forensic linguistics covers a very wide area and so for the rest of this article I will leave on one side all work where linguists are simply describing aspects of written and spoken legal language and I concentrate on that subset of research. The essential characteristics of forensic examination texts are presented. Attention is focused on the requirement to introduce new terminological units into the system of forensic examinations. Sadly, it appears that the barriers to professionalising interpreting are only partly academic – poor remuneration works against attracting the best into the field. However, insofar as they are academic, forensic linguists need to involve themselves much more actively in training both the interpreters and the legal professionals, with the latter group being the more difficult to access. In this paper, it is proposed to shift the focus from means to purpose and consider forensic science current challenges in terms of discipline, before addressing organisations’ specific issues. It is proved that the specificity of the forensic discourse determines the use of a significant number of terms from related fields of knowledge as part of its terminological system.