Metaphors in law: methodological foundations for research

Abstract

Language of law and language of normative legal documents with their specific features represent scientific knowledge, designed to objectively reflect the real world; they act as an independent regulating force. The word as the main structural and semantic unit, which plays a key role in organizing the text of a normative legal act, is realized not only in its direct nominative meaning, but also as a lexical means of secondary designation - metaphor. It is noted that the attitude to metaphor and to its use in normative legal acts is ambiguous. In order to highlight and address the challenge, we analyze the history of the study of this linguistic phenomenon, and trace the shifts in scientific views on metaphor from the perspective of its functional ambiguity. As a result, the nature of metaphor and its status in the process of scientific cognition is determined, the criteria and conditions of admissibility of metaphor in the language of law are systematized. The research confirms the leading role of metaphorical mechanism in modeling the legal space of normative act.