Systematization of phraseological units of English-language legal discourse

The purpose of the research is to develop a thematic classification of English phraseological units functioning within the framework of legal discourse, taking into account their correlation with the professional world picture of a lawyer. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author created a thematic classification of phraseological units according to the principle “from the concept – to the phraseological unit”, which can become the basis in the compilation of an ideographic dictionary of English phraseological units under study. As a result of the research, it was substantiated for the first time that all phraseology of the macro field “Law” can be divided into three phraseological fields: general legal phraseology, phraseology of procedural law and phraseology of substantive law. The analysis undertaken showed that the identified fields of phraseological units include phraseological units of a terminological or non-terminological nature, which can differ in their structure, origin, stylistic marking, semantic fusion, and degree of correlation with the legal sphere. The results obtained indicate that phraseological fields are open and dynamic. In the course of the research, it was also established that the phraseological field of substantive law is the most voluminous in quantitative terms and heterogeneous in relation to the concepts represented, which made it possible to further systematize it with the allocation of phraseological microfields. The study is conducted on the basis of the English language.