Literary Discourse As Moral Laboratory: Reimagining “Crime” And “Justice” Through Cognitive-Linguistic Frameworks
Abstract
This article investigates the concepts of “crime” and “justice” as they are constructed and negotiated within literary discourse, arguing that these notions function not as fixed legal categories but as dynamic, cognitively and culturally mediated constructs. The primary aim of the study is to conceptualize “crime” and “justice” as narrative-based moral phenomena that emerge through language, perspective, and cultural framing rather than through institutional legal definitions. To achieve this aim, the research sets out several objectives: (1) to examine philosophical, psychological, and cognitive-linguistic approaches to crime and justice; (2) to identify dominant discursive and metaphorical patterns through which these concepts are represented in literary texts; and (3) to compare culture- and genre-specific configurations of crime and justice across selected English, American, Russian, and Uzbek works. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, theory-driven research design grounded in interpretive and constructivist epistemologies. An interdisciplinary analytical framework is employed, integrating philosophical ethics, moral psychology, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. The analysis proceeds through three stages: conceptual-semantic reconstruction of core moral components (e.g., guilt, responsibility, punishment, restoration); discourse-pragmatic analysis of evaluative language, modality, narrative voice, and focalization; and cognitive-linguistic modeling of underlying conceptual metaphors and blending processes. Comparative analysis is applied to identify both shared and culture-specific patterns in the literary construction of crime and justice. The findings demonstrate that literary discourse consistently reframes crime as a cognitive-moral process involving intention, justification, and internal conflict rather than a discrete legal violation. Justice, in contrast, is characterized by semantic indeterminacy and narrative postponement, frequently realized through psychological recognition, moral reckoning, or symbolic closure rather than institutional punishment. Across different literary traditions, justice is systematically relocated away from formal legal systems toward narrative meaning-making, although the specific metaphorical models—such as justice as revelation, control, suffering, or survival—vary culturally and generically. In conclusion, the study argues that literature functions as a cognitive-ethical laboratory in which societies explore moral ambiguity, test competing value systems, and reimagine the relationship between transgression and responsibility. By offering an integrated interdisciplinary model, the article contributes to discourse studies, cognitive linguistics, and literary ethics and provides a theoretical foundation for future comparative and empirical research on moral concepts in narrative discourse.