JUDICIAL METAPHORS FROM SEMANTIC, CONCEPTUAL AND TRANSLATION PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

This paper examines the use and translation of metaphors in the argumentative sections of judgments issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Metaphor plays a fundamental cognitive and rhetorical role in legal discourse, enabling judges and litigants to articulate abstract legal principles, structure factual narratives, and frame persuasive arguments. The study analyses conventional metaphors, in particular those embedded in descriptions of police conduct, prison practices, and the actions of domestic courts that contribute to a broader conceptualization of the state as rights violator. For the purposes of this research a corpus of ECtHR judgments was created and the metaphor identification procedure was applied. The study distinguishes between transcultural and monocultural legal metaphors and evaluates the translation strategies applied, including image transfer, image substitution, reduction to sense, and omission. The findings demonstrate that metaphors are central to constructing persuasive narratives of rights violations and that their translation affects the transmission of conceptual and evaluative meaning across legal systems.