\u201cIt\u2019s All Just a Game\u201d: How Victims of Rape Invoke the Game Metaphor to Add Meaning and Create Agency in Relation to Legal Trials

Solveig Laugerud

doi:10.1007/s10691-020-09444-0

Abstract

Metaphors are common in legal discourse because they reify abstract legal concepts. The game metaphor, sometimes used to characterise legal trials, tends to be associated with legal professionals’ work in court. This metaphor portrays a legal trial as a competitive, hostile and masculine process that excludes victims from participating in the trial. In this article, I analyse interviews with victims of rape who have had their case prosecuted in the courts in Norway. The victims use the game metaphor to characterise both the trial and their participation in it. I investigate how the game metaphor adds meaning to rape victims’ understanding and experience of a legal trial and creates room for agency in relation to the prosecution of their rape case.

Highlights

A legal trial is sometimes compared to a game (Ebbesson 2008)
The interviewees who had their cases prosecuted after the victim reform apply the stage and game metaphors
They shared this percep‐ tion with the interviewees who did not report their experiences to the police and those who had their cases dismissed by the police. During the trial, their perception changed. One reason why they resorted to the game metaphor may be the actual similarities between a trial and a game that they observed in court, such as selecting the jury by means of drawing lots

Summary

Introduction

A legal trial is sometimes compared to a game (Ebbesson 2008). The game meta‐ phor is applied to legal processes and shapes and promotes certain understandings of legal trials. Based on Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis and concepts of social roles and performances, Konradi (1999, 1996b) describes how rape victims develop and use strategies to strengthen their legal cases by the ways in which they prepare their testimonies and manage their emotions in court. She conceptualises part of the victims’ preparations in terms of appearance work, which refers to their “intentional efforts to accommo‐ date classic cultural stereotypes of rape” (Konradi 1996b, 30). He is not obliged to promote the truth, as Norwegian prosecutors are, but to protect the accused’s rights

Method

Conclusion