Theoretical Model of a Linguistic Form of a New Russian Criminal Code

The paper discusses a general description of the language of criminal law and basic methodological approaches to the development of a theoretical model of a linguistic form of a new Criminal Code. Based on a natural-language approach, the author highlights that the language of criminal law is a system of lexical and grammatical means of expressing the content of normative and legal regulations of criminal law (criminal law prescriptions). An ontological status of the criminal law language of criminal law is determined by the fact that it belongs to a natural (for the Criminal Code of the RF it is the Russian language) language and a genre that is adapted to the sphere of criminal law regulation. It is proved that two main characteristics, namely accuracy and clarity, are inherent in the language of criminal law. Accuracy is defined as a maximum compliance between a legislative thought (legislative will) and an expression of that thought (will) in the wording of a law; clarity means certainty, distinctness of an expression of a legislative thought (legislative will) in the wording of a law. It is argued that the language of criminal law is a specialized language designed primarily for professionals and lawyers, and for citizens, to whom criminal law prescriptions are addressed, it is enough to have a general idea that they are prohibited to commit acts defined in the Special Part of the RF Criminal Code as crimes under threat of penalty. However, this statement should not be considered as absolute, because a number of permissive rules are included into the system of domestic criminal law that give a person the right to cause harm while respecting established criminal law requirements; these conditions shall be prescribed in a natural plain language that is understood by its main recipients -"ordinary people" - without any unknown, little-known, highly specialized criminal law terms. The author offers using main methodological approaches to develop a theoretical model of a linguistic form of a new Criminal Code of Russia that are based on both per se juristic methods (comparative-legal and historical-legal) and methods inherent in linguistics (linguistic descriptions, contextual analysis, an interpretive method).

«естественноязыковой» подход, criminal law, language of criminal law, ontological status, style of a criminal law, the accuracy and clarity of criminal law prescriptions, natural-language approach, legislative term, blanket terminology, defining concepts and terms, figurative and expressive means of a language

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