Narrower or broader Ground? The Role and Function of Metaphors in Legal Discourse

Metaphors are a fundamental resource of both formal and informal legal discourse, as many recent studies testify. In non-technical discourse about legal topics, metaphor serves as a means of conceptualising processes which are frequently abstract or hard to comprehend. Justice may exploit the source domain of machines (‘to oil the wheels of justice’, Cognitive Metaphor justice is a machine) or that of roads (‘the paths of justice’, Cognitive Metaphor life is a journey). These linguistic practices are long-established. Metaphor is an important resource for the layman to conceptualise justice, to permit discussion of its complexities. Turning to the professional use of legal language, the contribution made by metaphor is far stronger, and this constitutes the topic of our chapter. Our fundamental aim is to show that metaphor is closely involved in the formation and delineation of precise legal concepts, and in the discursive processes by means of which they become accepted or applied.