DISCIPLINES AS EPISTEMIC CULTURES: A BASIS FOR LINGUOCULTURAL ANALYSIS OF DISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This article examines the applicability of linguocultural analysis beyond its conventional focus on national cultures by extending the methodology to the study of disciplinary or professional cultures conceptualised as epistemic cultures. While linguocultural analysis has traditionally been employed to reveal how national or multicultural worldviews become linguistically encoded in literary discourse, recent scholarship highlights that professional communities similarly generate shared beliefs, values, cognitive frameworks, and communicative conventions. Building on theoretical insights from cultural and linguistic pragmatics and from Knorr-Cetina’s sociology of epistemic cultures, the study aims to demonstrate how disciplinary communication—in this case, legal discourse—can function as a linguocultural resource within literary texts. Methodologically, the research undertakes a qualitative linguocultural analysis of the German novel Der Vorleser (The Reader), drawing on M.P Castillo Bernal’s findings regarding lexico-semantic and morpho-syntactic features associated with German legal communication. The analysis reveals that elements such as specialised terminology, nominalisations, professional titles, modality markers, and impersonal constructions serve both to construct an authentic legal setting and to characterise the narrator as a legal professional. The study concludes that epistemic cultural traits operate in literary contexts in ways analogous to national cultural indicators, thereby justifying the extension of linguocultural methodology to professional subcultures. Theoretically, the research contributes to broadening the scope of linguocultural analysis by integrating disciplinary communication into its domain. Practically, the results underscore the importance of recognising epistemic-cultural markers in translation, since preserving or functionally adapting such features is essential for maintaining the stylistic, atmospheric, and characterising functions in translated texts.