Abstract
This is an investigation of performativity in legal documents in the framework of conceptual blending developed by Fauconnier and Turner. The corpus under investigation spans more than 500 years and consists of a limited range of legal text types. Performativity permeates legal discourse both at the individual level (contracts, pledges, wills, donations etc. concluded between natural persons) and at the institutional level (church donations, international treaties and alliances). In earlier documents (15th to 18th century), performativity is achieved mainly by rhetorical and lexical means, such as repetition and elaborate curses meant "to enhance the performative potential of documents as autonomous communicative acts" (Danet&Bogoch 1992), while in 19th and 20th century documents it tends to be achieved by grammatical means, such as tense. Performativity in Romanian legal discourse may also be influenced by interference from Latin, Church Slavonic, French and (more recently) English.
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