COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF FORENSIC MEDICAL EXAMINATION TEXTS IN LEGAL DISCOURSE
Abstract
This article examines the cognitive and linguistic features of forensic medical examination texts within legal discourse. Forensic medical reports are complex expert documents located at the intersection of medicine, law, and institutional communication. They convert professional medical observations into legally relevant evidence and therefore require both scientific accuracy and textual clarity. The study examines how expert knowledge, reasoning, categorization, causality, and evidentiality are represented in such texts. From a cognitive perspective, forensic medical examination texts reflect the stages of professional thinking: observation of bodily injuries, identification of medical signs, classification according to accepted criteria, interpretation of causal relations, and formulation of conclusions. From a linguistic perspective, these texts are characterized by terminological precision, objectivity, standardized structure, impersonal constructions, passive voice, nominalization, logical sequence, and factual density. Particular attention is given to modality, since expert conclusions may be categorical, probable, or limited depending on the available data. The article also analyzes the relationship between descriptive and inferential components. Descriptive parts record visible facts, while inferential statements explain the mechanism, cause, time, degree of severity, and possible circumstances of injury. The findings show that the evidential value of forensic medical texts depends on the balance between medical exactness and legal comprehensibility. Ambiguity, excessive terminology, or weak logical connection may reduce the reliability of expert conclusions. Therefore, such texts should be studied as cognitive-linguistic documents that encode expert knowledge and mediate communication between medical specialists and participants of legal discourse in investigative, judicial, and broader procedural decision-making contexts.
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