“Moral Injury” and “Offended Feelings”: Translation of Religious Emotionality into the Language of Court Documents
https://doi.org/10.22394/2073-7203-2024-42-4-109-136
Abstract
The article presents the results of the study of discursive construction and moralization of subjectivity in court documents. The research is based on the analysis of court decisions in criminal cases under Article 148 of the Criminal Code, Part 1 and Part 2 (better known as the article ‘on insulting the feelings of believers’), as well as demanding compensation for moral injury for ‘insulting the feelings of believers’ under Article 151 of the Civil Code. The documents create a model of an intersubjective situation of insult, considered with the reliance on the internal states of the participants of this situation — intentions in the case of the accused and emotions in the case of the victims, which are expressed through the legal language. The discursive reconstruction of the intentions of the accused is framed with reference to legal moral categories, this creates an image of a person who consistently and deliberately violates the norms of the moral order. To protect this order, ‘religious feelings’ translated into terms of moral injury and moral suffering. Hence, in the context of the legal protection of the ‘feelings of believers’, the anti‑social behaviour of the accused is contrasted with social, i.e. moral, behaviour, namely, respect for certain (most often Orthodox Christian) symbols. The typical antipode for the accused is a religious person, or, rather, someone who properly demonstrates an emotional reaction to acts of transgression of moral boundaries.
Keywords
anthropology of morality,
affective turn,
offense to the feelings of believers,
moral injury,
interdiscursivity
Supporting agencies: This research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 21-18-00508,https://rscf.ru/project/21-18-00508/.
About the Author
E. A. Khonineva
European University at St. Petersburg ; The Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Ekaterina A. Khonineva
St. Petersburg
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Review
For citations:
Khonineva E.A. “Moral Injury” and “Offended Feelings”: Translation of Religious Emotionality into the Language of Court Documents. State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide. 2024;42(4):109-136. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22394/2073-7203-2024-42-4-109-136
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