O modus operandi das representações do latim no discurso jurídico barreirense

Abstract

The master's research, entitled “The modus operandi of the representations of Latin in barreirense legal discourse”, had as main objective to investigate how the lawyers of the Barreiras-BA Sub-section represent Latin in their judicial pieces. After its submission and approval by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP), data collection began, using two corpora: semi-structured interviews and legal pieces. The interviews were conducted with five lawyers who have more than three years of work experience in forensic practice; and the legal pieces analyzed also corresponded to five lawyers with the same time in office. The study relied on the application of qualitative, descriptive and documentary research. The qualitative traced descriptions, comparisons and interpretations of legal Latin and its use in forensic discourse, without attaching to objective, accurate, and controlled observation data; the descriptive, for presenting the position of the legal professionals about Latin and its use in legal language; and the documentary, materialized in the occurrence of Latin expressions and their representations in legal pieces. The first chapter focused on the history of legal Latin and its representations in ancient Roman law; the second, in the representations of legal Latin, its discourse and its practices; the third and last chapter, in the investigation of the modus operandi of the representations of Latin in barreirense legal discourse. The research revealed that linguistic beautification and reduced complexity, in both corpora, are the two predominant representations in barreirense legal discourse. This result confirmed that new generations of lawyers are familiar with the Latin expressions used, and that the vast majority neglect those that nothing contribute to the objectivity and haste of the text. Thus, the assertive initially raised in this research were partially refuted, since today the representations of Latin have not shown concern with erudition, with refined knowledge, with pedantry or even with the power that they exercise in the discourse. On the contrary, they seek to democratize justice through simplification and clarity of language.