the metaphorical legal speech and the rhetorical construction of truth in law
;Pedro Parini
american statistician2015Vol. 16pp. 11-46
230
parini2015revistathe
Abstract
In this essay I argue that the establishment of a proper model for the
understanding of law depends on the development of an epistemology of
metaphor. My hypothesis is that the production of knowledge would be
intrinsecally conected to the typical human faculty of dealing with figurative
aspects of legal language. Thereby the concept of truth in the legal domain
would depend on the concept of metaphorical truth for which the idea of
correspondence between language and reality, as well as the idea of consensus
are irrelevant from a rhetorical point of view. To advocate this thesis
I assume that the very idea of literal meaning is metaphorical and that it
functions only as a referential to the development of non-literal interpretations of normative texts. Thus, I conclude affirming that legal semantics depends on its pragmatics, i.e., that the production of legal meaning is connected to performative issues and creative use of language.