| Keywords [eng] |
metaphor, law, institutional legal discourse, theory-constitutive metaphors, metaphorical patterns, International Criminal Court, metafora, teisė, institucinis teisinis diskursas, teorinės-konstatuojančiosios metaforos, metaforiniai modeliai, Tarptautinis baudžiamasis teismas |
| Abstract [eng] |
This thesis investigates the metaphorical conceptualization of law in a corpus of 56 decisions of the International Criminal Court, covering decisions published between 2022 and 2025 and totaling 257,777 words. The study draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2003), the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group 2007), and Metaphorical Pattern Analysis (Stefanowitsch 2004; 2006), a methodological framework developed and consistently applied across a body of research on legal language (Šeškauskienė and Stepančuk 2014; Šeškauskienė et al. 2016; Šeškauskienė 2026). The two target content words, chamber and defence, were selected as the primary analytical entry points, as the lemma law occurred too infrequently in the corpus for reliable analysis. The study pursues three objectives: (i) to compile and process a corpus of International Criminal Court decisions and generate a frequency-based profile of law-adjacent content words; (ii) to systematically identify and categorize the metaphorical patterns associated with the content words chamber and defence in the corpus; and (iii) to evaluate the identified metaphors against the criteria for theory-constitutive metaphors as established by Boyd (1993) and Hofnung (2025). The analysis identified four metaphors: LAW IS A PERSON, LAW IS CONFLICT, LAW IS AN OBJECT, and LAW IS NATURE. Their distribution proved markedly uneven. The dominant metaphor, LAW IS A PERSON, accounts for 92.23% of all metaphorical expressions, followed at considerable distance by LAW IS CONFLICT at 7.31%, while LAW IS AN OBJECT and LAW IS NATURE each contribute marginal frequencies. With regard to the personification metaphor, the chamber and the defence are attributed differentiated human capacities: cognitive abilities (reasoning, determination), communicative actions (noting, finding, addressing), emotional states (satisfied, concerned, mindful), and directive authority (guiding, directing, steering). The overall effect is the construction of a selective and idealized form of institutional personhood, one that is rational, hierarchically positioned, and morally attentive, yet lacking the vulnerability and individuality associated with fuller human experience. The study further examines whether the identified metaphors function as theory-constitutive metaphors in the senses of Boyd (1993) and Hofnung (2025), i.e., whether they not only describe what institutional entities do but actively constitute the conceptual framework through which legal reasoning proceeds. The analysis demonstrates that law is a person is in this sense load-bearing, i.e., without the attribution of agency, intentionality, and judgment to entities such as chambers and the defence, the communicative structure of legal discourse as currently organized would be difficult to sustain. The LAW IS CONFLICT metaphor, meanwhile, is distinctive in character in the corpus of the study. Rather than foregrounding the aggressive, combat-oriented framing associated with adversarial legal traditions, it is oriented toward protection and the safeguarding of rights, framing legal proceedings as structured arenas of contestation rather than battles to be won. The minor metaphors, LAW IS AN OBJECT and LAW IS NATURE, though marginal in frequency, are theoretically significant: they materialize abstract institutional reality, rendering procedural acts in terms of physical processes and stable terrain. The findings contribute to the comparative study of metaphor in legal discourse and to broader discussions of the role of language in shaping the authority and legitimacy of international justice institutions. Future research is recommended to expand the corpus, to compare the International Criminal Court with other international courts, and to examine in greater depth the ideological dimensions of the metaphors identified in the thesis through the frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis. |
