Non sequitur: the discourse marker ‘sledovatel’no’ (therefore) in poetic and judicial discourse
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2026-2-8
- Pages
- 148-166
Abstract
The paper presents a comparative analysis of the inferential discourse marker Rus. ‘sledovatel’no’ (Eng. therefore) in poetic and judicial discourses. The relevance of the study lies in the insufficient attention paid to the pragmatic dimension of discourse markers in institutional and literary communication. The research aims to identify discourse-specific patterns of functional change in inferential markers operating under opposing communicative orientations: linguistic creativity in poetry and normative regulation in judicial discourse. The data comprise corpora of poetic and judicial texts. The methodology combines corpus-based discourse analysis with pragmatic and speech act theory. In poetic discourse, inferential markers may lose their function of logical inference and be reinterpreted as means of metalinguistic reflection and disruption of logical-syntactic relations. In judicial discourse, by contrast, inferential markers are integrated into procedural formulas and perform a declarative illocutionary function, institutionally fixing decisions and presenting them as logically inevitable. The study reveals a discourse-driven asymmetry in the pragmatic effects of inferential discourse markers, demonstrating their linguo-creative potential in poetry and their manipulative as well as regulatory functions in judicial communication.