engleski

Metaphors Lawyers Live by

The usage of metaphor in languages for specific purposes has been in the focus of interest of cognitive linguistics for years, especially after Lakoff and Johnson published their famous book “Metaphors We Live by” in 1980. They have proven that a metaphor is a basic process pervading all our speaking, thinking, and acting (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Inspired by that book, the author of this plenary speech aims to prove that metaphor was intensely present in the history of law as it pervades the language of legal theory and practice in modern times. Terms like injury of law, burden of evidence, soft laws, hard laws, etc. are so often used by lawyers in their professional communication that they hardly recognize them as metaphors. In the introductory part, the terms conceptual metaphor and lexical metaphor, as well as the source domain and the target domain of the metaphor are defined. Accordingly, conceptual metaphor and lexical metaphor are interpreted from the perspective of the language of law. As an introduction to the discussion of currently used metaphoric terms in the field of law, a number of metaphoric legal expressions will be discussed from the historical point of view, indicating that the metaphoric and other poetic expressions were recognized as the features of legalese back in the early 17th century. In the main part, the author presents and discusses most common conceptual metaphors in connection with the terms law, justice, court, and some metaphors typically used in the criminal law, company law and the contract law. The examples that are excerpted from selected Legal English dictionaries and textbooks are organized and discussed in three main groups: structural, orientational and ontological metaphors. Special attention is paid to metaphoric terms and phrases of the EU Law based on the analysis of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Consolidated version 2002). In the closing part, some interesting examples of the metaphoric use of colours in legal expressions will be discussed from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.

the language of the law, cognitive linguistics, poetic figures, metaphor, metonymy

Plenary speech at an esteemed international conference in legal linguistics