Immigration act as a genre of institutional legislative discourse

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Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Immigration act as a genre of institutional legislative discourse

Horodylovska M.T., PhD Student, Hryhoriy Kochur Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics

Summary

Thepaperseeksto outline a theoreticalframework for the study of Immigration Act as a genre of institutional legislative discourse. The production of institutional legislative discourse by a social legal institution - the U.S. Congress is determined and its definition is suggested. The paper singles out principal features of institutional legislative discourse, namely: a) its functioning within a social legal institute and its being produced by a social legal institution; b) its definite aim - the establishment of legislation; c) the crucial roles of the subjects - legislators (congressmen and senators), who pass laws and those citizens whom it concerns; d) its being dependent on the sociocultural context; e) the use of particular sociolect, which is typical for the U.S. Congress and is understandable for the subjects.

The paper seeks to identify the role of the institutional legislative discourse within the system of institutional discourses. The author adopts as a starting point that immigration as a social phenomenon and immigration issues have to be regulated by laws. The structure of the U.S. Congress as a legislative body and the procedure of laws acceptance consisting of eight stages are presented.

The article attempts to identify common and specific features of Naturalization Act of 1790, Naturalization Act 1795, Naturalization Act of 1798, which together with Alien Friends Act of 1798, Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Sedition Act of 1798, organized a set of laws called Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and provides the results of comparative analysis of the texts of these acts on lexical, syntactical and textual design levels.

Key words: institutional legislative discourse, the U.S. Congress, legislative body, social institute, social institution, Immigration Act, genre, genre of Immigration Act.

Анотація

Городиловська М. Т. Імміграційний акт як жанр інституційного законодавчого дискурсу

Стаття має на меті окреслити теоретичні засади дослідження імміграційного акта як жанру інституційного законодавчого дискурсу. Визначено, що інституційний законодавчий дискурс породжується соціальною правовою інституцією - Конгресом США, а також запропоновано дефініцію цього поняття. У статті виділено основні ознаки інституційного законодавчого дискурсу, а саме: а) функціонування в межах соціально- правого інституту та породження соціально-правовою інституцією; б) наявність певної мети - створення законодавства; в) вирішальні ролі суб'єктів - законотворців (конгресменів та сенаторів), які приймають закони, та тих громадян, яких це стосується; г) залежність від соціокультурного контексту; ґ) використання певного соціолекту, характерного для Конгресу та зрозумілого для суб'єктів.

Стаття спрямована на визначення ролі інституційного законодавчого дискурсу в системі інституційних дискурсів. Автор виходить з того, що імміграція як соціальне явище та питання імміграції повинні регулюватися на законодавчому рівні. Представлено структуру Конгресу США як законодавчого органу, а також процедуру прийняття законів, що складається з 8 етапів.

Значна частина статті присвячена Імміграційному акту як жанру інституційного законодавчого дискурсу. Аналізуються його характерні особливості - суб'єкти, текст та соціокультурний контекст. Дослідження здійснюється на основі Імміграційних актів Конгресу, прийнятих у XVIII столітті.

У статті зроблено спробу виявлення спільних та специфічних рис в Актах про натуралізацію, прийнятих у 1790 та 1795 роках, Акті про натуралізацію 1798 року, який разом з Актом про чужинців-друзів 1798 року, Актом про чужинців-ворогів 1798 року та Актом про бунти 1798 року складали набір законів під назвою Акти про чужинців та бунти 1798 року, а також наведено результати порівняльного аналізу текстів цих актів на лексичному, синтаксичному та графічному рівнях.

Ключові слова: інституційний законодавчий дискурс, Конгрес США, законодавчий орган, соціальний інститут, соціальна інституція, Імміграційний акт, жанр, жанр імміграційного акта.

Introduction

With the spread and development of new trends in the XXI century linguistics, discourse remains the most frequently discussed phenomenon. According to the generally accepted approach, discourse is divided into personal and institutional. The aim of the paper is to define the institutional legislative discourse (further in the text - ILD) brought to life by the U.S. Congress as well to examine the Immigration Act (further in the text - IA and/ or IAs) as its genre. The specific features of ILD are discussed, its types and genres are identified and approaches to its analysis are suggested based on the IAs passed by the U.S. Congress. The topicality of the research is based on the texts of IA introduced by the U.S. Congress in the XVIII century that have not been previously discussed from the standpoint of its genre dimensions.

The latest publications and researches. Various aspects of discourse were studied by N. Andreichuk, I. Bekhta, A. Bielova, Batsevych, T. Radzievska, О. Selivanova, A. Semeniuk, K. Serazhym, I. Shevchenko, G. Brown, Dijk van T.A., J. Dubois, N. Fairclough, R. Fowler, Halliday M. A. K., K. Heinz, B. Hodge, Kress, J. Ostman, M. Stubbs, T. Trew and others. Genre and genre analysis were analyzed by F. Batsevych, Kh. Diakiv, N. Kravchenko, T. Yakhontova, V. Bhatia, A. Duranti, M. Halliday, J. Hampers, E. Hoffmann, J. Martin, K. Miller, R. Kantor, J. Swales and others.

Research results

Modern linguistics is focusing on various aspects of discourse and discourse analysis. Discourse is viewed «as language embedded in social interaction» [1]. Throughout the development of different interpretations of the term «discourse», scholars agreed that discourse can be also classified into various types according to the spheres of its functioning. O. Selivanova divides written discourse into a) aimed at an addressee and b) that includes no addressee [2, p. 135]. From a sociolinguistic perspective, we can distinguish two main types of discourse: a) personal and b) institutional. I. Frolova describes specific parameters of institutional discourse (further in the text - ID). Among them she highlights 1) structural orientation; 2) a great number of language restrictions - as institutional discourse represents and is created by social institutions, which have well-established rules and logically- organized structure of their existence and functioning, that is why the language applied within the institutions activity has its purpose for the target audience and is always characterized by a formal style, which includes complex sentences, specific lexis depending on the very institution, etc.; 3) relatively fixed change of communicative roles [3, p. 70]. ID is also characterized as a verbal exchange between two or more subjects under the following circumstances: a) at least one of the subjects should represent a work-related institution (in this research - congressman and senators); b) the language, the nature of interaction and the speakers goals are partially determined by the social institution; c) at least one subject defines the interaction as «work» or as «doing work» [4].

It is of an utmost importance to distinguish «social institute» and «social institution». According to Oxford Learner's dictionary, an institution is «the act of starting or introducing something such as a system or a law» [5]. Collins Dictionary defines «institution» in American English as 1) an organization, establishment, foundation, society, or the like, devoted to the promotion of a particular cause or program, especially one of a public, educational, or charitable character; 2) the building devoted to such work; 3) any established law, custom, etc.; 4) the act of instituting or setting up; establishment [6]. According to the Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, an institute from a legal perspective is «a set of legal norms in any sphere of social relations» [7, p. 33-35], while an institution is an organization. In this research we distinguish social legal institute as a set of legal norms that regulate immigration as a social phenomenon and social legal institution - the legislative body - the U.S. Congress. As we deal with various aspects of immigration, we can distinguish the institute of immigration within American immigration law. Any legal institute has the following features: textual nature of its contents in a form of specific terms, notions, concepts, etc., and their introduction and pass by a legislative body of the state. The institute of immigration is characterized by: 1) well- organized, complex structure with the implementation of such terms as «nationalization», «naturalization», «alien», «foreigner», «immigrant», «immigration», etc.; 2) it is introduced and passed by a social institution, which is a legislative body in the American legal system - the U.S. Congress. The institute of immigration focuses on intersectoral relations, e. g. the immigration matters affect various spheres of social life such as labor relations, education, male/female rights, etc. It has a regulatory role, which emerged because of the development of social phenomenon of immigration and the necessity of legal regulation of their status within and outside the territory of the USA. Besides, there is a protection function which means the state is ready to legalize the status of immigrants, that they can use their right to be protected by America.

ILD as a type of ID is characterized as a hierarchically organized environment of information-communication interaction of subjects, united by common institutional placement, status and rules of conduct, related models of social and professional knowledge, as well as a special selection of communicative strategies and tactics.

ILD possesses a medium or high level of formality depending on the correlation of status and role of the participants. Besides, ILD has a rigid structure. One of the most important features of ILD is that it is generated and functions within a social institution, where its members - participants have specific roles and play on behalf of it implementing the aim and tasks of the institution. Another feature is that the participants of ID are entitled to roles, necessary to attain their goals. The roles of the subjects are determined by their public status, that is defined as the relative social standing in the eyes of the institution.

Thus, principal features of ILD are the following:

exists within a social institute and is produced by a social institution - the U.S. Congress; institutional legislative congress

the subjects take their roles on - legislators (congressmen and senators), who pass laws and those citizens whom it concerns;

depends on sociocultural context; it has its specific aim - the establishment of legislation on different issues;

makes use of specific language - sociolect, which is typical to a social institute - the U.S. Congress - and that is understandable for the subjects.

According to Article 1 Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, «all the legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives» [8]. Being a legislative body of the federal government of the United States, the U.S. Congress drafts laws, confirms or rejects presidential nominations for heads of federal agencies, federal judges, and the Supreme Court, and has the authority to declare war. Generation of IA by the U.S. Congress consists of the eight stages: 1) a Representative shall sponsor a bill;

the bill goes to the assigned committee for study; 3) if the bill is released by the committee, it is put on a calendar to be voted on, debated or amended; 4) if the bill passes by simple majority, which is 218 out of 435, it moves to the Senate; 5) in the Senate, the bill is assigned to another committee and, if released, debated and voted on; 6) in case of its change by the Senate, the bill must be returned to the House of Representatives for concurrence; 7) the resulting bill returns to the House of Representatives and Senate for final approval; 8) the bill has to wait for the President's decision, who has 10 days to veto the final bill or sign it into law [9; 10].

Throughout its history, the U.S. Congress has considered measures on various immigration issues, which included border security, immigrant admissions, immigration enforcement, restrictions on age, race, gender, social status, etc. for people willing to enter the USA, legalization of unauthorized immigrants, naturalization and nationalization procedures, temporary and permanent immigration, etc. The research is conducted with special reference to key terms used in the acts concerning the issues of immigration passed by the U.S. Congress. Immigration both as a social phenomenon and a process has been a vital part of the American nation formation and was of the utmost importance, a great number of laws dealt with the issues of immigration and immigrants. It is suggested to apply the «nomination criterion» for compiling the corpus of legal acts discussing immigration, that is to select only those acts from the bulk of laws issued by the Congress, which contain the following terms in their titles: «immigration», «alien», «naturalization», «nationalization», «national», «nationality» and «displaced». Special attention is paid to the mentioned terms implementation in the acts introduced by the U.S. Congress as well their first use in these acts is discussed.

The legislators took into consideration the importance of the legalization of immigration relations introduction since the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the U.S. Constitution establishment in 1787. In the course of American history, because of a continuous flow of immigrants to the territory of a newly - formed state since 1776, there was a drastic necessity of the legal status of immigrants, who were not called immigrants in the very first acts on immigration. As a result, the first act on immigration called Naturalization Act of 1790 was adopted by the U.S. Congress. It included neither the term «immigration» nor «immigrant» in its title, but it was the first official act, which concerned the issues of immigration. It took more that 150 years for the Congress to legislate the term «immigrant» to categories of people who arrived on the territory of the US. As a consequence, Aliens and Nationality of 1940 was introduced. §1101 of Aliens and Nationality Act included the definition of the term (3) «alien» which is «any person not a citizen or national of the United States» [11, p. 15], (15) «immigrant» - every alien except an alien who is within one of the classes of nonimmigrant aliens mentioned in the Act [11, p. 16], (21) «national» means a person owing permanent allegiance to a state [11, p. 20], (22) «national of the United States» means (A) «a citizen of the United States, or (B) a person who, though not a citizen of the United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States» [11, p. 20]. The Act also indicates different categories of immigrants. For example, (A) an immigrant, lawfully admitted for permanent residence, who is returning from a temporary visit abroad; (B) an immigrant who was a citizen of the United States and may, under section 1435(a) or 1438 of this title, apply for reacquisition of citizenship; (C) an immigrant, and the immigrant's spouse and children if accompanying or following to join the immigrant; (D) an immigrant who is an employee, or an honorably retired former employee, of the United States Government abroad, or of the American Institute in Taiwan, and who has performed faithful service for a total of 15 years, or more, and his accompanying spouse and children [11, p. 21].

The U.S. Congress as a legislative body of the state passes on only laws. Within ID we can distinguish first and foremost 1) genre of Constitution; 2) genre of bill (public or private), which is a draft of a suggested future law presented to the Congress for discussion.

As a genre of institutional discourse IA possesses some characteristic features - subjects, socio-cultural context and text (Figure 1).

The subjects of the genre of IA are 1) U.S. Congress persons and 2) for whom the act may concern. The U.S. Congress persons are divided into 2 groups - congressmen (congressman or congresswoman) and senators. Congressmen are the individuals who are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, which consists of 435 congressmen and congresswomen who run their two - years term and are directly accountable to people and more responsible to popular demand. The Senate has two chambers and is composed of 100 senators. Each member of the House of Representatives represents a portion of their state known as a Congressional District, which averages 700.000 people while each senator represents the entire state. Introducing legislation on immigration must be approved and ratified by both the House of Representatives and the Senate before it can be enacted. From social perspective, congressmen and senators are responsible for suggesting laws and bills that are in the best interest of their voters, who expect them to thorough to social problems, which have to be identified and quickly solved implementing relevant legislation.

The interaction between subjects within social institutions can be viewed as question - answer dialogue, where the question is a social problem of immigration and its various aspects and answer - laws on immigration passed by the U.S. Congress. According to Alice F. Freed, «question - answer» sequences occur in all types of institution encounters [12].

Depending on social situation relevant well-organized text templates are used to forecast the realization of the generation of ILD. Some linguists claim that this predictability provokes so-called «symbolic violation» as each institution establishes its discourse, sets its rules, categories, and norms, and imposes its own rules on its subjects [13, p. 301]. Text is dependent on sociolect - an important component of ID, which which helps to organize effective communication. T. Luckmann defines sociolect as «institutional speech style» and distinguishes its characteristics as follows: a) conditioned by a certain lifestyle; b) functioning within certain areas of communication; c) specific indicators production due to the appropriate speech style. Sociolect refers to rules, conduct, functions, and concepts of the social institution, which are important for the world's picture construction and ways of its interpretation [13, p. 301]. The language, which functions within ILD is always specific. Legal language is characterized as a language for specific purposes or special - purpose language, sub - language, scientific language, specialized language [14, p. 9; 15, p. 28], or legalese [16]. Six main features of the legal language are discussed, among which: a) limited subject matter (law); b) lexical, semantic and syntactic restrictions (e. g. specific terminology); c) «deviant» use of grammar; d) high frequency of certain constructions (e. g. complex and compound sentences); e) text structure (e. g. legislation); f) the use of special symbols [17, p. 22]. According to E. Alcaraz and B. Hughes, typical features of legal English are the following: a) Latinisms; b) terms of French and Norman origin; c) formal register and archaic diction; d) archaic adverbs and prepositional pharases; e) redundancy; f) performative verbs; g) euphemism and contemporary colloquialism [18, p. 6-18]. This study is focused on the second feature (b) that is specific terminology, implemented in the U.S. Congress acts on immigration. The lexicon of legal language is full of formality or downright pedantry [19, p. 8], the vocabulary is complex and unique, archaic and sometimes includes complicated structures, which are difficult to understand not only for a layman but for lawyers as well - this feature may be claimed as a universal feature of legal language however, different genres of ILD have their unique legal vocabulary.

This research includes the analysis the IAs passed in the XVIII century that are Naturalization Act of 1790 [20], Naturalization Act of 1795 [21] and Naturalization Act of 1798 [22] (Table 1).

Analyzing the table above, we make a conclusion that Naturalization Act of 1790, Naturalization Act of 1795, Naturalization Act of 1798 discussed the procedure of becoming a naturalized citizen of the US. We observe the gradation of increasing of time limits of living on the territory of the US as well as residence period. Naturalization Act of 1790 gives no notice of time, while the residence period is 2 years in comparison with Naturalization Act of 1798 with notice time of 5 years and residence period - 14 years.

Based on this analysis, we state that IA as a genre of ILD is characterized by:

textual designed level: 1) use of capitalization; 2) fixed- structure; 3) footnotes; 4) the text is divided into sections; 5) length:

3 pages long (Table 2).

morphological level: number, e. g. person - persons (law context);

lexical level: 1) negations (e. g. no, not, never); 2) Latinisms (e. g. bona fide, potentate, proviso; 3) archaisms (e. g. thereof, wherein, thereupon, heretofore, etc.); 4) modal verbs: shall, may, might; 5) specific lexis (e. g. act, jurisdiction, proof, legislature, etc.;

use of performative verbs (e. g. admit, declare, enact, renounce, reside, etc. (Table 3).

syntactic level: 1) no simple sentences; 2) complex sentences;

compound sentences; 4) complex-compound sentences; 5) use of Present Participle; 6) passive voice prevails active (Table 3).

Based on data gathered from three analyzed Acts we summarize that on the lexical level we notice the use of negations, archaisms, modal and performative verbs, specific legal lexis in all acts, while the application of Latinisms include Naturalization Act of 1795 and 1798. On the syntactic level we notice simple sentences in neither of the acts, while compound, complex and complex- compound are present are presented in all the investigated acts. The implementation of Present Participle and Passive Voice constructions over Active Voice are demonstrated in all acts as well. We also observe positive dynamics of the use of Latinisms on the lexical level, footnotes and sections division (Naturalization Act of 1790 had no section, while Naturalization Act of 1795 and 1798 were divided into sections), the length of acts increased from 1 page to 3 pages on textual design level.

Figure 1. Immigration Act as a genre of institutional legal discourse

Table 1 IA of the XIII century

Table 2 Textual design level of analysis of IA of the XVIII century

Table 3 Lexical level of analysis of IA of the XVIII century

Table 4 Syntactical level of analysis of IA of the XVIII century

Socio-cultural context plays an important role for the genre of IA in ID. Immigration Acts are introduced by the U.S. Congress because of the development of a social phenomenon of immigration. People, who are called aliens arrive in the USA having their aims and dreams. They are not native Americans that is why their existence on the territory of the US should be established by law.

Conclusions and prospects for further exploration

Institutional legal discourse is a type of institutional discourse, which exists within a social legal institute and is produced by a social legal institution - the U.S. Congress, the subjects are divided into 2 groups: 1) legislators (congressmen and senators) and 2) those persons whom it may concern, depends on a sociocultural situation, has the goal of laws introduction and makes a specific language - sociolect. Immigration Act is a genre of institutional legislative discourse, which functions within a social institution - a legislative body - the U.S. Congress, implements legalese, appears in a social communicative situation where the subjects (congressmen and senators) have their roles with social statuses (firstly legislators) and the text they produce has a goal to reach. The main characteristic features of IA are the following:

subjects, socio-cultural context and text. Thus, Immigration Act is the genre of institutional legislative discourse that includes three components - subjects, who are legislators and those citizens whom it concerns, text, which is dependent on sociolect and socio-communicative situation which includes the emergence of a social group - immigrants and legislation, which should be introduced to regulate their status on the territory of the US. The analysis of the Immigration Acts passed in the XVIII century demonstrates high frequency of the use of compound, complex, complex-compound sentences, passive voice, present participle on the syntactic level, Latinisms, modal and performative verbs, negation on lexical level. We observe dynamics on the graphical level - the first act had no footnotes, no sections division and was 1 page long, while the last act in that century included footnotes, had 6 sections and was 3 pages long.

Further research of immigration acts passed by the U.S. Congress should focus on the investigation of the acts of the XIX as well as XX century.

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