Abstract
The essay deals with the mechanism of interpretation for legal metaphorical expressions. Firstly, it points out the perspective the cognitive approach induced about legal metaphors; then it suggests that this perspective gains in plausibility when a new bilateral model of language understanding is endorsed. A possible sketch of the meaning-making procedure for legal metaphors, compatible with this new model, is then proposed, and illustrated with some examples built on concepts belonging to the Italian Civil Code. The insights the bilateral model of understanding provides are compared with the practice followed by legal communities for dealing with the metaphorical expressions they coin and use.
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Notes
Analyzing the existing literature on legal metaphors (produced by jurists, linguists, philosophers, rhetoricians, cognitive psychologists, and literary theorists), Smith [18] detected four types of metaphor operating in persuasive legal discourse: those that achieved the status of judicial principles governing an issue; metaphoric constructs playing the role of tools of analysis used to reason through legal issues; metaphors entailed by the writing style of a legal author; metaphors inherent to language itself. A transversal distinction can be traced between extra-linguistic metaphors, namely symbols metaphorically used in the practice of Law [29], conceptual metaphors underpinning legal constructs and lines of reasoning, and metaphors fully expressed in the legal languages.
While metaphorical schemes such as “knowledge as vision” shape legal reasoning in a general way and not exclusively—which is not to say that their use has not got peculiar consequences for it [19, 20, 30]-, schemes such as social entities like rational agents characterize law more directly. Following Kuhn [31], they can be considered disciplinary matrix referring to beliefs, values, techniques, a legal community has more or less consciously decided to use in order to master a given conceptual domain.
Through metaphors law keeps in touch with society because their terms come (usually) from ordinary language, and in facts the historical uses these terms in non-legal communities provide some insights into the boundaries within which any legal interpreter considers herself confined. How the legal community might co-opt and adapt certain metaphorical terms for use in the making of meaning in contemporary legal decisions has provided substantial insights into the relations between changing social and political relations and the range of uses to which a metaphor might be put.
“Metaphor and metonymy can be used to reverse, modify or change meanings. This rhetorical tool may be used by anyone. But, it is most dangerous when used by an authority to linguistically validate its own ideology” [47: 216]. The choice of metaphors used in codes or Directives may also be linked (consciously or not) to political orientations. [34]. A deconstructive analysis of open normative metaphors is a tool for raising awareness of the unconscious cultural influence that may influence the judgements of legal interpreters. A necessary step of this clarification is estranging the already familiar rather than familiarising what is strange; making what is assumed as known strange again can be achieved by “decontextualizing the obvious and then recontextualizing it in a new way” [48: 4].
Most of the expressions occurring in legal texts have a metaphorical origin and they all share some vagueness [35]: however, some of them are more metaphorical and more legal than others. Their prompting a creative meaning making is not obliterated as it happens for other legal expressions with a metaphorical origin (such as obligation), but it is rather exploited explicitly; furthermore, they were expressly coined to denote legal concept. Directive more then descriptive, these expressions are concrete sets of implicit rules recognised by the community as exemplars for managing new areas of the Law. For examples of legal metaphorical expressions in common Law cf., amongst others, [15, 28, 38–41].
Metaphors used in normative texts represent ‘junction points’ of legal systems necessary for their adaptation to possible concrete cases. When they are open to interpretation, their contact with ordinary language turns them into channels through which codes keep in touch with cultural values and beliefs shared by (part of) the society, and then can be constantly updated, changing meaning without changing words.
The story of the civil fruits concept in romanistic systems shows how legal communities forge, open and close a metaphor in order to meet juridical, social, ethical and economical developments. For a reconstruction of the historical and ideological context in which the notion of civil fruits and that of interests as civil fruits grew up, cf. [49, 50]. Although with differences consequent to their dogmatic derivation, most civil codes contain the civil fruits concept (for a comparative perspective cf. [49, 50]) and define it through the same mechanism: an intensional description (in which either the terms use or enjoyment or both occur and the proviso that civil fruits accrue day by day depending on the period of entitlement, cf. for instance, I.C.C., art. 821: “I frutti civili si acquistano giorno per giorno, in ragione della durata del diritto”) plus a closed list of category of items the concept subsumes (instances slightly vary in the different codes: for instance, the art. 537 of the Civil code of the State of Louisiana defines civil fruits as “rents of real property, interest of money, annuities and all other kinds of revenue or income derived from property by the operation of the law or private agreement, or as the profits, returns or compensation a person receives from another, for the use or enjoyment of a thing”). Common law lacks a concept analogous to civil fruits, but political economy adopted the expression for representing monetary returns as belonging to some capital (property) source, and the metaphor is used in taxation law for both representing monetary returns as `fruits’ and capital sources (`trees’) as productive origins of monetary gains, since it makes questions more easily understood and followed than legal proprietary terms. For a comparative perspective between the civil law concept of ‘civil fruit’ and the English common law concept of ‘income’, cf. [36].
I.C.C., art. 820: “Sono frutti civili quelli che si ritraggono dalla cosa come corrispettivo del godimento che altri ne abbia. Tali sono gli interessi dei capitali (1224, 1282, 1815), i canoni enfiteutici (957 e seg.), le rendite vitalizie (1872 e seg.) e ogni altra rendita, il corrispettivo delle locazioni (1571 e seg.)”.
For the origin of this metaphor, cf. [51].
I.C.C., art 1027: “La servitù prediale consiste nel peso imposto sopra un fondo per l’utilità di un altro fondo appartenente a diverso proprietario (1071, 1100)”.
I.C.C., art. 1028: “L'utilità può consistere anche nella maggiore comodità o amenità del fondo dominante. Può del pari essere inerente alla destinazione industriale del fondo (1073 e seguente)”. I.C.C. divides servitudes in coercive and voluntary (art. 1031): other codes in urban and rural, cf. for instance the Civil code of the State of Louisiana, art. 643.
For instance, the I.C.C. uses it without defining it (cf. artt. [31]; 23, 25, 634, 1229, 1343, 1354, 2031, 2332). As opposed to fruits and predial servitude, the metaphor public order does not come from Roman Law, but was used for the first time in Code Napoléon. For a reconstruction of its coin and use, cf. [52].
As an effect of the implementation of the EU Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts (93/13/EEC).
The distinction between open and closed metaphors echoes the difference made by Cornelia Müller between sleeping and waking metaphors [56]: as opposed to other labels such as conventional/novel, dead/alive, usual/new, both distinctions underline the interpretive attitude towards metaphors rather then their linguistic characteristics. As regards to legal metaphors, the choice of the adjectives closed or open is meant to highlight the role of the communitarian decision about their status.
Parallel Distributed Processing models coined by connectionism (not specifically for language understanding, but cf. [63]), suggested that processing on parallel levels could do the same work as a long serial processing and was biologically more plausible. The asset is shared by the models conceived for language understanding by Recanati.
The idea seemed awkward as regards to language understanding specifically. On the contrary, the idea that more than one mind cohabits in the same individual has been explored at various times. Forty years ago, split-brain experiments [64–68] prompted a renewal of the old debate about the permanence of the perception of the unity of the Self [69–77] which led to theories assessing that the Subject has many local minds prevailing for specific tasks (language, visuo-spatial abilities, etc.), agencies of which conscience is only the ‘speaker’ or an imaginary character created by the brain in order to better cognitive performances and social interactions. These theories of conscience did not tackle however the possibility that language interpretation is simultaneously run by two minds (on the contrary, they talk of a linguistic mind, a visual mind, etc.).
Reasons for theoretical awkwardness of this idea would deserve an entire essay. Amongst them: the Aristotelian idea of the simplicity of the linguistic intellect, that scholastics made necessary part of philosophical enquiry about language; the alleged supremacy of semantics over pragmatics theorized in first half of the last century; the analogy with language processors that characterized the reflection of the other second half. Objections moved to the possibility of the Self as a society of ideas stand against the idea as well (cf. n. [18]): as regards the perception of language understanding as performed by a unitary subject, Gazzaniga has recently proposed that it could be the outcome of a merging effect performed by the LH that effaces all contrasts that may have occurred during the different streams of analysis [68].
“Evidence points to RH processing being more coarsely tuned than LH processing, because a greater spread of inputs and outputs in RH semantic areas produces more diffuse semantic activation, compared with homologous LH semantic areas. This view is consistent with data suggesting that the RH is generally more interconnected than the LH. Compared with the LH, the RH has a greater proportion of white matter […], a higher correlation of activity across regions, more diffuse electrophysiological responses, and more diffuse functional […] deficits consequent to similar sized brain lesions. This view is also consistent with asymmetries in cortical microcircuitry of language areas that influence how neurons spread information. […] Overall, these microcircuitry asymmetries suggest broader input and projection fields, and greater functional overlap across processing units in the RH than in the LH – precisely the conditions that should foster coarser coding.” ([80]: 513). Cf. also [83].
Vision is performed by the magno system, exploring everything falls in the whole visual field at low resolution, and the parvo system, working at high resolution and analyzing in detail objects populating a very small area of this space. Following the analogy between visual exploration system and language understanding system, this model of language understanding hypothesizes that contextual and semantic analysis, like peripheral and central vision, are specializations of the same primitive system of analysis. In this way, it maintains specific skills and competences of semantic and contextual analysis claimed by their respective supporters (for an overview, [94]) without excluding possible redundancies.
Moderate contextualism is compatible with the Merkl-Kelsen position, although considering, as opposed to this, ambiguity as systemic ([57]: 118).
Several models of language understanding, recognizing contextual analysis a role more or less relevant, share the unitary or serial stance rejected by bilateral models. The fictive ‘traditional model’ here sketched assigns contextual analysis a relevant role in order to highlight that this stance is shared not only by models keen to semantic minimalism, but also by those endorsing a moderate contextualism.
Provisional projections of inferences from source onto target may start well before all admissible coordination rules amongst the two domains have been set up: selecting different enrichments of the basic model of source means building different coordination relationships with the target domain, and this means trying different sets of semantic projections onto it to be valued in the light of their fruitfulness.
Although the mapping between the domains suggested by the text in which the open legal metaphor occurs is part of the implicit halo of meaning this very text conveys and rhetorical techniques for recovering this halo are available, they do not eliminate discretion, since they entail a choice between possible paraphrases that select a possible implicit sense at the price of discarding another possible one. Building this mapping would be a matter of choice even if the domains were isomorphic, and then their coordination given a priori. Even in this ideal case, the interpreter should have to choose which convention of coordination holds between them: specificity of their elements (the fact that, after all, they are different domains) implies that between them relationships not shared by entities to which they are connected may occur and vice versa ([101]: §13, *10).
In this sense, considering the points of choice in the meaning-making of the metaphor may be of help both when the ground of the decision is produced and when it is interpreted.
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Morra, L. New Models for Language Understanding and the Cognitive Approach to Legal Metaphors. Int J Semiot Law 23, 387–405 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-010-9163-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-010-9163-z