THE TEXT OF THE CRIMINAL CODE AS A LEGISLATIVE GENRE AND A UNIT OF LEGAL DISCOURSE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK LEGAL LANGUAGE

Abstract

This article examines the text of the Criminal Code as a distinctive legislative genre and a central unit of legal discourse through a comparative analysis of English and Uzbek legal language. The study argues that the Criminal Code should be understood not merely as a codified legal document but as a complex communicative instrument through which the state formulates prohibitions, defines criminal liability, and regulates social conduct. The research focuses on the structural, lexical, semantic, and pragmalinguistic features of criminal legislation, with particular attention to modality, legal terminology, syntactic compression, and interpretive precision. A comparative approach demonstrates that despite belonging to different legal traditions, English and Uzbek criminal law texts share core discursive functions while differing in drafting conventions and linguistic realization. The article applies descriptive, comparative, discourse-analytic, and pragmalinguistic methods. The findings confirm that the Criminal Code operates simultaneously as a normative text, an institutional speech act, and a mechanism of legal communication. The paper contributes to contemporary legal linguistics by proposing an integrated model for analyzing criminal legislation as discourse rather than solely as doctrine.