The Modification of Talmy's Three-step Process for Reading Comprehension of Legal Texts

Abstract

This research aims to improve the comprehension of legal documents by using Talmy's (2017) three-step process for identifying and integrating references from contextual cues into linguistic forms. This study investigates the cognitive processes used to comprehend legal writing, drawing on ideas from pragmatics, discourse analysis, cognitive semantics, and Talmy's force dynamics notion. The study utilizes a qualitative content analysis method to examine how readers mentally handle cue detection, attention allocation, and semantic integration when they come across excerpts from court indictments. Data is collected from 10 Vietnamese indictments including various criminal counts. An analysis is conducted on the indictments to determine different sorts of contextual cues that are there. The study focuses on analyzing the distribution and interaction of cue categories (lexical, collateral, background, temporal) in order to better understand how they facilitate or impede the three-step process of comprehension. The aim is to identify factors that might improve or hinder understanding. The purpose of the results is to enhance readers' ability to effectively use contextual cues while interpreting legal processes, rules, and arguments in written form. This will ultimately improve the efficiency of understanding legal texts.