Review

Antonina Berezovenko’s article explores pequliarities of the discourse practice development in the realm of the criminal law as a function of the intensive statehood building process in sovereign Ukraine.  International subjectivity of Ukraine became a powerful stimulus for the development of all discursive practices, including the special ones, in particular – of the discourse of the criminal law.  The appearance of such national discourse, which would be adequate for the world communicative practice, evokes an urgent producing of those nationally specific means of a categorical – notional and verbal framing of the reality, which would be capable of describing sufficiently both: national and supranational phenomena.  Under contemporary circumstances of a dominancy of English language as an international medium  

Toda’s dominancy of English as an international medium makes us to focus on research of Ukrainian-English language encounter, pequliarities of the nomination (predominantly the terminological one) in the comparative aspect and on the harmonization of the  categorical – notional systems of both languages.

The article aims to establish main tendencies of the discursive dynamics of sovereign Ukraine, to define those factors, which influenced the formation of the discursive practice in the realm of the criminal law, to point out important characteristics of this process in context of the establishing of Ukraine’s subjectivity.

The contemporary discursive dynamics of Ukraine is being defined by the following tendencies: 1) intensification of linguo-creativity; 2) internationalization of linguo-creativity; 3) autochtonization (nationalization) of linguo-creativity. 

The important features of the discourse development in the realm of the criminal law after the declaration of independence in 1991 were: 1) scientific search, significantly stimulated by Ukraine’s international subjectivity; 2) intensive lexicographic work in this sphere of social relations (criminal law) – making of dictionaries of linguistic and encyclopedic nature (Ukrainian, two- and multi-lingual); 3) creation of the manuals, which formed among the target audience such a categorical – notional apparatus and communicative skills for the operations with the latter one, which would be able to play a role of an adequate instrument for intellectual reflection of the judicial problems within sovereign Ukraine and beyond its borders.

Keywords: criminal law, law discourse, law categories, statehood, cognitive field, semantics, Ukrainian language, English language.