Indecency as a discursive category

Abstract

The article aims to determine the status of indecency as a functional-semantic and discursive category containing the concept "indecent form" used in legal practice. The paper presents different approaches to this concept. Based on expert activities, the authors of the article define the above-mentioned concept as a discursive category with a structured functional-semantic field. Thus, the concept "indecent form" is interpreted from the cognitive-discursive perspective with due regard to communicative and pragmatic aspects of utterance/text/discourse. The functional-semantic field of indecency is presented in the paper as a set of various linguistic, speech and discursive means. Factors forming the category of indecency are as follows: communicative, sociocultural, cognitive and pragmatic. The authors have clarified the status of an "indecent form", defined the correlation of this concept with the speech act of "insult" and the category of indecency, introduced the concept "indecent format", distinguished linguistic and discursive means that mark the indecent format of discourses. The study results can be used in lingual-expert activities and journalistic practice to avoid conflict situations. The article is theoretically significant since it expands the concept of indecency in general and clarifies its status.