Metaphor and metonymy in legal texts Cover Image

Metaphor and metonymy in legal texts
Metaphor and metonymy in legal texts

Author(s): Adisa Imamović
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera, Osijek
Keywords: metaphor; metonymy; legal register; contrastive analysis; cognitive linguistics

Summary/Abstract: Legal discourse has been studied so far by numerous linguists and legal ex-perts. Linguistic studies have predominantly focused on stylistic elements of the legal register, such as morphological and syntactic features. Until re-cently the figurative nature of legal register and its great potential were completely disregarded by linguists. While legal experts realised the importance and power of metaphor and metonymy decades ago, linguists have been slow to follow. The aim of this paper is a contrastive analysis of conceptual metaphors and metonymies in the legislation systems of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UK and the US. The metaphors and metonymies used in the analysis are collected from Higher Education Acts from these three countries.

  • Issue Year: XIV/2013
  • Issue No: 2-3
  • Page Range: 295-306
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English