Understanding the text of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation by different social groups

Abstract

This article examines the comprehension of legal texts by various social groups, as the problem of comprehension legal texts by ordinary citizens has remained a key issue in legal linguistics for decades. The relevance of the study is determined by the complexity of legal language and the presence of specialized terminology, which hinders unambiguous comprehension and can lead to various interpretations of the text. The purpose of this study is to identify the influence of informants' social characteristics on their ability to correctly interpret a legal text using the Labor Code of the Russian Federation as an example. To achieve this goal, an experiment was conducted with the participation of 40 informants, the sample being balanced by the factors “education level” (students and specialists with higher education) and “specialty” (lawyers and philologists). The experiment took the form of a questionnaire in which informants answered questions about the content of the text after reading it. The text assignment consisted of eight questions aimed at assessing the degree of comprehension of the text; the questions were formulated in literary language without the use of legal terminology. Informants selected answers from a closed list. The results of the study demonstrate a correlation between the level of legal text comprehension and the social characteristics of the respondents: lawyers understand the text better than philologists, and specialists understand it better than students. It is worth noting that, despite philologists' specialization in text analysis, they demonstrate a poorer comprehension of legal texts. This may be due to a lack of specialized legal education, the presence of unfamiliar specialized terminology in the text, and a general lack of legal education among the population.