Denotative Modeling of Legal Discourse

The discourse of contracts, agreements, and treaties is an important part of social relations. At the initial stage, such documents can be modeled for interpretive analysis and automated processing. The modeling method simulates the transition from verbal form to structured content. The article describes the procedure for constructing a denotative model of various types of legal discourse at the initial stage of interpretive analysis. The author used the formal semantics method based on the denotative structure of the text to determine the ratio of explicit vs. implicit information in contracts and public offers. The analysis of content elements revealed links and relationships between them, some of which were illustrated graphically as hierarchical structures based on the special legal and economic knowledge. Others were visualized as a network explicating the effect of dispositive legal norms for private entities. The visualization revealed some challenges in understanding and presenting the denotative structure of legal discourse. These difficulties depended on the type of the document, as well as on the links and relationships between the parties specified in the text, its subject, and norms stipulated by the civil, labor, banking, of other law.