The process of metaphorization in english legal terminology

Abstract

The article describes the process of metaphorization of English-language legal terms, features of metaphor. Terms with elements of metaphorization are very difficult to translate, since such concepts may not be present in the translation language. The object of this study is English legal terminology. The material of the study was a corpus of examples of the size of 186 terms obtained using the method of continuous sampling from dictionaries: Oxford dictionary of Law and Black’s Law dictionary. The following set of methods is used in the study: systemic, cognitive, etymological and statistical. During the system-structural processing of dictionary data, information was obtained that the process of metaphorization is a complete and functional way of term formation in the field of law. Examples of metaphor terms for various branches of law are given. A partial analysis of terms is considered separately, which shows that most of the metaphors are made up of nouns and adjectives, and individual cases of the formation of terms using verbs. Special attention should be paid to metaphor terms that include colour elements. The article presents an analysis of legal terms that contain color components. Thus, we can say that metaphorization is a productive way in the process of term formation, but not the most frequent way of term formation. It should be noted that the language of legal terminology does not tolerate ambiguity, but on the contrary, in texts of this type there should be certainty and unambiguity of interpretation.