the metaphorical legal speech and the rhetorical construction of truth in law

In this essay I argue that the establishment of a proper model for the understanding of law depends on the development of an epistemology of metaphor. My hypothesis is that the production of knowledge would be intrinsecally conected to the typical human faculty of dealing with figurative aspects of legal language. Thereby the concept of truth in the legal domain would depend on the concept of metaphorical truth for which the idea of correspondence between language and reality, as well as the idea of consensus are irrelevant from a rhetorical point of view. To advocate this thesis I assume that the very idea of literal meaning is metaphorical and that it functions only as a referential to the development of non-literal interpretations of normative texts. Thus, I conclude affirming that legal semantics depends on its pragmatics, i.e., that the production of legal meaning is connected to performative issues and creative use of language.