French legal neologisms in smart contracts

Abstract

Aim . To review the legal neologisms of corporate documents, in particular, smart contracts, recorded in fiction and industry literature, in order to compare the ways of word formation of neologisms from articles of the Civil Code (Code Civil) of the French and court decisions. Methodology . In the course of the study, a continuous sampling of legal neologisms from authentic French texts published between 2008 and 2019 was carried out, on the basis of which the most typical legal neologisms were identified. To determine the extent of their distribution in jurisprudence, corpus analysis was used (French-language corpus and English-language Google Ngram Viewer corpus for 2019). In order to determine the methods of word formation and compare these neologisms with the terms recorded in the dictionary, semantic analysis was used to identify the meanings of neologism terms, as well as descriptive and comparative general linguistic methods. Results . As a result of the conducted research, trends have been established and the main ways of word formation of legal neologisms associated with the use of smart contracts of the modern French special language in the period 2008–2019 have been identified. Research implications . The results of the study can be used for further application in the field of modern contract law, contracts based on blockchain and agreements in the electronic form, analysis and prediction.