Some Linguistic Peculiarities of the Speeches for the Defense Made by Female Public Defense Lawyers in the Soviet Period

Abstract

The article considerslinguistic peculiarities of the speeches for the defense made by female public defense lawyers in the 50-60s of the XX century. This is a cross-disciplinary research of such sciences as rhetoric, law narratology and gender linguistics. The analysis of the texts of speeches takes into consideration the features of the “female language” elicited in gender linguistics, the article studies the cases of their presence and absence in the court narrative. While working with the texts the extra linguistic factor is taken into account, namely the history of the problem concerning admission of women to the practice of defense as well as the peculiarities of the court trials of the studied period. On account of the linguistic peculiarities of the speeches revealed in the course of the research the authors come to the conclusion about the leveling of gender communicative special features in the frame of the soviet court rhetoric in the 50-60s of the XX century.