文档介绍：Making Sense of Metaphors:
Visuality, Aurality and Reconfiguration of Legal Discourse
Professor Bernard J. Hibbitts *
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
The Table of Contents
Introduction: "An Ear for an Eye"
I. Metaphors in Life and Law
II. "Mirrors of Justice": Visuality in Legal Discourse
A. Seeing Culture
B. Visuality and Power
C. Law and the Phenomenology of Sight
III. "Fair Hearings": Aurality and the New Legal Language
A. Hearing Culture
B. Aurality and Diversity
C. Law and the Phenomenology of Sound
Conclusion: Law Re-viewed
The Abstract
Building on the work of Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, David Howes and other scholars of the senses, this article examines the reconfiguration of contemporary American legal discourse represented by the apparent shift from mostly visually-evocative metaphors for law and legal practice (judicial "review", "bright-line" distinctions, "penumbras" of authority, "observing" the law, "squaring" precedents, etc.) towards a greater number of aurally-evocative figures of speech (law as "dialogue", "conversation", "polyphony", etc.).
Part I of the article establishes the importance of examining this reconfiguration in light of the nature of metaphor and its central role in thought and legal reasoning.
Part II explores the techno-cultural, sociological and phenomenological roots of American jurists' traditional preference for visual legal metaphors. It argues that visualist legal language has both reflected and reinforced three fundamental circumstances: first, Americans' long-standing technological and cultural prejudice in favor of visual expression and experience; second, the legal and political power of certain gender, racial, ethnic and religious groups which at least in the American context have demonstrated a particular respect for visuality; and third, the corespondence between traditional American legal values and the values supposedly supp