Dmitrasevich R. Structural and Lexical Semantic Peculiarities of English Legal Psychology Terminology

This research investigates structural and lexical semantic peculiarities of English legal psychology terminology. 3000 terms were chosen as a research material from English and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedic dictionaries and special English legal psychology literature and journals. English terminology of legal psychology being a unique object for terminological studying combines both legal terms and psychological terms. Besides, it is characterized by a greater variety of sphere usage in comparison with other terminological systems. One of the main distinguishing features of English legal psychology terminology is the use of terms from various sciences. The research shows the development of legal psychology as a science and reveals three periods of its formation: pre-classical, classical and modern. Accordingly there were terms of general usage at the very beginning which later on changed their meaning due to the terminolization processes and then new terms appeared under the influence of Latin and French becoming the basis for modern legal psychology terminology. On the basis of legal psychology special language analysis five strata were distinguished each having substrata which are considered as sublanguages of legal psychology special language: I. Sublanguage of theretical fundamental legal psychology sciences: 1) Theory of psychology. 2) Theory of law. II. Sublanguage of legal psychology experimental sciences: 1) Researches: "Psychometrics"; "Psychodiagnostics"; "Forensics". 2) Experiments. ІІІ. Sublanguage of applied sciences: 1) Types of psychology. 2) Jurisprudence. IV. Sublanguage of material production: Infrastructure objects. V. Sublanguage of usage shpere: Sublanguage of participants