An analysis of legal discourse, and in particular its component produced by judges, i.e. judicial discourse, may draw on various logical, axiological, sociological, psychological or linguistic approaches, to name but the most common of them. As for linguistic investigations of legal language, these often involve the concept of equivalence in legal translation or aim to improve the legislative process. Also, they often include phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic analyses (Malinowski 2006: 38). Yet, however prominent the place occupied by the above research trends, discourse-oriented examinations focusing on the functional aspects of lingua legis also show promise. Indispensable in determining the purpose of the interaction between the legal discourse community participants, functional viewpoints allow the analyst to decode pragmatically relevant linguistic devices that the interactants employ in order to achieve specific communicative goals. Thus, accounting for context-specific factors and linguistic features alike, genre analysis – employing a functional-interactional point of view and studying situated linguistic behaviour – appears to be a useful analytical instrument with regard to the genre of judgment exemplifying written institutional discourse.

However, before a contextual analysis of the genre of judgment is offered and the corresponding generic structure explained, the first part of Chapter Three will include an explanation of key terms and concepts thanks to which a genre-based analysis of judicial discourse can be carried out.