Persuasion category in Statutes of Lithuania

The main topic of this essay is to prove the presence of persuasion in historic legal text. The authoress has analyzed legislator's statements, included in articles of Statutes of Lithuania, as speech acts. There are two main groups of speech acts: act of stating legal norms and act of persuasion. First of them is verbalized by performative verb (ustawiamy) possessing illocutionary force and modal deontic expressions possessing perlocutionary force (mosty moscic... beda powinni, karan byc ma). Second of them is an act of convincing of rightness of stating. It is verbalized by argumentative expressions (Tez My obaczywszy na szkode ziemska, jako jedni z drugimi w sasiedztwie wasn miedzy soba maja) and valuative expressions (okolo obrazenia Majestatu naszego abo zdrady Rzeczypospolitej, ku sromocie a zelzywosci). In Statutes of Lithuania stating and persuasion are distinct textual categories. Comparison of persuasion category in modern and historic legal text illustrates vast differences in legislative techniques.