Nomes gerais para humanos em decisões judiciais redigidas em espanhol e em português

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the use of a set of human generalnouns in court decisions written in Spanish and Portuguese. The following linguistic units, used in nominal phrases with generic interpretation, are described: hombre / homem (‘man’); individuo / indivíduo (‘individual’); persona / pessoa (‘person’); ser humano / ser humano (‘human being”); sujeto / sujeito (‘subject’). The research is based on theoretical studies of lexical semantics, some of which are contrastive, and on works that discuss the properties of legal writing. The data comes from judicial decisions of civil appeals elaborated by magistrates form the Superior Court of Justice of the Province of Córdoba (Argentina) and from the Court of Justice of Minas Gerais (Brazil). As results it can be argued that these names are often used in contexts where it is desired to highlight that the natural person is a subject with rights. In addition, the possibility of variable use of these forms for the expression of the concept 'human being' is reaffirmed and results of previous research on these names are partially confirmed.