What is the Sound of a Corporation Speaking? How the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor Can Help Lawyers Shape the Law
Linda L. Berger
- Download PDF file (2.2 MB) Get Adobe Reader
This article argues that better understanding of metaphor's cognitive role can help lawyers shape the law. According to cognitive theory, metaphor molds our understanding, our reasoning, and our evaluation in persuasive and invisible ways. If metaphor is not merely a literary device but instead creates meaning, it is a particularly powerful and inescapable method of using language to persuade. To argue against a dominant metaphor, lawyers must be able to uncover it; to argue for a new metaphor, lawyers must be able to imagine it. Studying the work of cognitive researchers builds such perception and imagination: the more we know about the work of the mind, the use of language, and the means of persuasion, the more critical, insightful, and persuasive we can be. As a way to explore metaphor's role in shaping the law, the article focuses on how a particular lawsuit was influenced by metaphor, in particular, by the primary metaphor that a corporation is a person within the more complex metaphorical system suggested by the marketplace of ideas model for First Amendment protection.