Construction Of Courtroom Argument Through War Metaphor

The thesis is the materialization of an effort to bring into practical application the widely known however understudied metaphor: ARGUMENT IS WAR.Courtroom argument is one of the most important events in court proceedings. Traditionally courtroom argument is constructed through one of the three approaches: classical (rhetoric), Rogerian and logical arrangements. Traditional approaches to courtroom argument are powerful in that they are the crystallization of the wisdom of great elocutionists over thousands of years.However traditional approaches are faulted at that they all make the abstract concepts the starting point and the core of the argument which appears intimidating to those not well versed in abstract thinking.By espousing the Lakoff-Johnsonian theory of conceptual metaphor and applying it onto the construction of courtroom argument, the researcher takes a different approach. The alternative approach the researcher proposed provides an experiential basis for argument construction to model after: the WAR metaphor.With the introduction of WAR metaphor, courtroom argument construction takes on a new look. It ceases to be cold thinking; it is transformed into the application, projection of WAR, a field or domain everybody has more or less first hand or second hand experiences. In other words, the approach the researcher proposed draws on everybody's daily experiences. Following WAR metaphor approach, everybody can construct forceful argument, let alone the well-trained legal practitioners. Under the approach, the argument is simply constructed through mapping the components of WAR domain onto ARGUEMNT domain through appropriate preservation and omission. When participants, parts, stages and progress of the source domain WAR are either preserved or omitted in the mapping process onto the target domain ARGUMENT, the construction of an argument is done.The rationale behind the application is that since Lakoff and his followers have postulated and empirically tested that conceptual metaphor structures and constitutes human understanding and war metaphor structures argument, it is natural to conclude: if this process is consciously employed, courtroom argumentcan be constructed through the application of WAR metaphor.We analyze the cases collected by way of the five mapping principles adopted from Lakoff s postulations on mapping features of conceptual metaphor. In Chapter 4, the relation between courtroom argument and war metaphor is analyzed which explains why war metaphor is employed in courtroom argument. In Chapter 5 the construction process of courtroom argument is analyzed, which lays the foundation for the analysis in Chapter 6 which argues that the employment of WAR metaphor helps build rigorous courtroom argument.Case analysis brings us the conclusion that WAR metaphor is actually behind arguments and different phases of arguments. Conscious employment of WAR metaphor helps construct rigorous argument.