Abstract
Metaphor is the transport of a word from its proper meaning to another meaning. It's a way of expressing one idea using a term that would normally refer to another.
Sometimes it's a way of making speech more elegant. At other times, it's a necessity, because we don't have enough words to describe clearly what we're talking about.
The sciences are rich in metaphors and, more broadly, tropes. This is also true of the law, when we would expect the opposite from this language of precision. But law does not exist in its natural state : it is a technique developed by human societies to reduce conflict. And precisely because most legal figures don't exist in their natural state, to make them more comprehensible we need to bring them closer to what already constitutes our experience, namely the body and its parts. It's a way of inserting the unspeakable into a familiar framework and, by doing so, apprehending it.
This is why we often speak of something else when talking about law, using metaphors and other tropes, as when Roman jurists say " A slave who has been manumis does not lose his head, because he had no head ". A seemingly bizarre statement, but one that had a precise meaning in legal language.
Quintilian, a master of the art of discourse, noted that we all resort to metaphors, without always being aware of it. Cognitivist linguistics has reached this same conclusion in recent decades, notably with the seminal book by Lakoff and Johnson. Metaphors - they explain - are part of everyday life. What makes them so interesting is that often, underneath a metaphor, we can guess a deeper concept, or even a way of conceiving the world : for example, considering time as money, or a trial as a battle, or a law as having a will. By following this path, which considers bodily metaphor as a detector of cultural models, the lecture will attempt to penetrate the mentality of Roman jurists, to go back to the origins of law, and ultimately to reflect on our own way of thinking about justice. This first lecture will introduce the methodological framework.
